The Risks Involved if the U.S. Withdrew From Iraq Essay

The Risks Involved if the U.S. Withdrew From Iraq - Essay Example This flawed justification has since been proven to be untrue as well. However, because of the occupation of Iraq, the international terrorist organization, Al Qaeda has grown in number, increased attacks worldwide and has infiltrated the borders of Iraq. The war was wrong on many fronts but withdrawing would be committing yet another wrong. Even those against the reasons the U.S. is occupying a sovereign nation admit that leaving would be a catastrophic mistake that would plunge the entire region into chaos. The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003 was initiated and largely conducted by the United States in response to what it claimed was an attack on its soil by various agents operating from within these countries. These actions have been defended by the Bush administration as not only legal but morally necessary to protect U.S. citizens. Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden hoped the U.S. would timidly withdraw from the Middle East, but he appears to have been aware that an aggressive U.S. response to 9/11 was entirely possible. In that case, he had a Plan: Al-Qaeda hoped to draw the U.S. into a debilitating guerrilla war in Afghanistan and do to the U.S. military what they had earlier done to the Soviets. The U.S. cleverly outfoxed Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, using air power and local Afghan allies (the Northern Alliance) to destroy the Taliban without many American boots on the ground. However, the Bush administration then went on to invade Iraq for reasons still unclear, where Americans faced the kind of wearing guerrilla war they had avoided in Afghanistan (O’Brien, 2005). Bin Laden obtained his wealth as an inheritor of his family’s highly profitable construction business. He has used this capital to finance the infamous terrorist group initially formed in an attempt to force the U.S. to remove its military base in his home country of Saudi Arabia.   Since that time the groups’ objectives have evolved and, because of the illegal occupation if Iraq, Al-Qaeda has succeeded in several of what are now its main goals.