"With great power comes great responsibility."
- Peter Parker: (Spider-Man)
“With great victory comes great sacrifice.”
-Theodore Roosevelt (“Night at the Museum”)
These two quotes are from two of my most favorite movies. The first was said by Spiderman: the popular comic book hero who made his leap to the big screen; and the latter by Theodore Roosevelt in Night at the Museum directed by Shawn Levy.
Both these; as much as how interesting they seem, are directly in connection with the topic at discussion, and can, at least to some extent, justify the intervention.
Starting off with Spiderman’s statement – the United States of America has, undoubtedly great “power”, economic or otherwise, within and beyond the geographic boundaries of the country. Being a the largest economy of the world (as to how longer this would last is a different story altogether!) ,being a veto power in the security council of the UN, holding 17% voting power in the World Bank the US DOES retain some “great power”. With this great power came “great responsibility” (I guess it still does) and the USA after 9/11 felt insecure and responsible for its people and people of the world. Weapons of mass destruction are OBVIOUSLY a threat to the security of the people. Iraq has in the past used chemical and biological weapons (by the way, which too are WMD’S) against almost ALL of its neighbors. Plus, Sadaam Hussein was not cooperating with the UN thereby discrediting the UN's integrity and power, what motivation would other countries have to listen to them if no action was taken? The Hussein gave the US government plenty of reasons to believe that he was hiding weapons of mass destruction when he chose to not cooperate with UN officials. This is like telling your mother that you’ve got good grades but refusing to show the report!!! We have to understand that the mother after-all has all reasons to suspect. And who knows FOR SURE whether nuclear weapons ARE in Iraq… one never knows!!!
Moving on to the second statement –“with great victory comes great sacrifice”: One might question me as to how you can call Iraq a success after all. Well, with all these statistics against you, you can’t. But look at it this way… after 9/11, which as the name suggests happened on the ninth of September 2001 (seven years ago) no terrorist attacks OF THAT MAGNITUDE occurred. Isn’t this a victory by itself? Iraq is the only reason why many countries (and even terrorist groups) stay away from WMD’S. And all those statistics you may have … they are all sacrifices made... may be by America, may be by Iraq... It may be money (billions and trillions) or the greatest sacrifice of all – life.
You can’t Justify the WAY the operations were done .. the operations were targeted on civilians and not on the government . But the US did have its REASONS .
True enough America MIGHT have made a mistake by looking for “nuclear weapons” in Iraq but Iraq (when I say Iraq , I mean the then Iraqi government ) gave them all reasons to suspect. “HIGH FENCES REALLY DO MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS” !!!