Various reasons have been given, and conspiracy theories developed on America’s invasion of Iraq under the Bush administration. However, to take lessons from that catastrophic and unnecessary war, one must rule out 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction as valid reasons to warrant the invasion. Rather, the invasion of Iraq had its roots in deep ideologies and a series of debates on the fundamentals of the American power over its rivals.
The roots of these debates were in the Republican Party disagreements in the 1990s regarding the power of America. This was mainly caused by the neoconservative movement, which was described as right-leaning but also heterodox. Neo-conservatism had existed for many decades in the U.S. The movement had a mixture of a strong belief in the transformative nature of America’s military strength together with a deep caution towards other countries that were seen as threats and morally unsteady. The neo-conservatism ideology directed that authoritarian countries were essentially dangerous and destabilizing. Therefore, those who subscribed to this ideology claimed that it was both the moral responsibility and a strategic measure for the U.S. to suppress the dictatorships and replace them with democracy. The neo-conservative movement wanted American dominance as an unquestionable military and moral world leader.
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It was these ideologies that made the Bush administration get obsessed with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. The obsession began with the Bush Senior administration in the early 1990s. The major political players in that administration such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz made sure that they further pursued these ideologies in the Bush Junior administration as Vice President and Deputy Secretary for Defense respectively. The neo-conservatism proponents have a profound belief in those ideologies that when 9/11 destabilized the U.S. foreign policy foundations, they found justification in invading Iraq and restoring democracy. It was this conviction to neo-conservative ideology rather than any gathered intelligence of Iraq or lies developed about weapons of mass destruction that led the U.S. into Iraq.
