Criticism Of The Iraq War
Timelines
- 2003
- 2004
- 2005
- 2006
- 2007
- 2008
- 2009
- 2010
- 2011
Phases
- Invasion
- Post-invasion insurgency
- Civil war
- Insurgency 2008-2011
- US withdrawal violence
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Battles and operations of the Iraq War |
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|---|---|
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Invasion (2003)
Post-invasion insurgency
Civil War
Surge (2007)
Insurgency (2008-2011)
Drawdown
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Insurgent attacks of the Iraq War |
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|---|---|
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‡ indicates attacks resulting in over 100 deaths
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The U.S. rationale for the Iraq War has faced heavy criticism from an array of popular and official sources both inside and outside the United States. Putting this controversy aside, both proponents and opponents of the invasion have also criticised the prosecution of the war effort along a number of lines. Most significantly, critics have assailed the U.S. and its allies for not devoting enough troops to the mission, not adequately planning for post-invasion Iraq, and for permitting and perpetrating widespread human rights abuses. As the war has progressed, critics have also railed against the high human and financial costs.
Some academics see such costs as inevitable until US foreign policy turns away from expanding US hegemony. Professor Chip Pitts accepts that an American empire exists, but argues that it is profoundly at odds with better instincts of US citizens and policymakers, and that rejecting neo-colonialism by military means as employed in the Iraq War is a prerequisite to restoring domestic civil liberties and human rights that have been infringed upon by an imperial presidency – while crucial, as well, to promoting peace and stability in the Middle East and other places of vital US interest. When Iraqi citizens were asked directly prior to the Civil war in Iraq, 82–87% of the Iraqi's polled wanted a timetable for the withdrawal of US-led forces. 47% of Iraqis support attacking US troops. The Center for Public Integrity alleges that President Bush's administration made a total of 935 false statements in a two-year period about Iraq's alleged threat to the United States.
Read more about Criticism Of The Iraq War: Government Expenditures, International Law, Troop Levels, Post-invasion Plans, Human and Financial Costs, Effect On Global War On Terror, Impact On Israel, Effect On Religious Minorities
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“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.”
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