Iraq War - preemptive war or preventive war?

[mircea]

In your opinion, the US led invasion of Saddam’s Iraq was a preemptive or a preventive strike?

Preemptive war

Preemptive war is waged in an attempt to repel or defeat a perceived inevitable offensive or invasion, or to gain a strategic advantage in an impending (allegedly unavoidable) war before that threat materializes.

Preventive war

A preventive war is a war initiated under the belief that future conflict is inevitable, though not imminent. Preventive war aims to forestall a shift in the balance of power by strategically attacking before the balance of power has a chance to shift in the direction of the adversary.

[Tiberios]

Preventive war

This one. There were hardly a threat from Iraq, but they had been a troublesome power in the Middle East. Personally I belive it was more motivated because the US got an excuse to remove Saddam and they used.

[gaius valerius]

Personally I belive it was more motivated because the US got an excuse to remove Saddam and they used.

Like they had in 1991... but didn't do... resulting in thousands of deaths. Saddam never posed a threat to the USA or any of its allies for that matter. On a more cynical not the region was a lot more stable under Saddam. Then there is the case of the Neoconservative logic and it's whole idea of 'evil' states and the spreading of freedom, bandwagoning effect, Kantian ideal of democracies being less inclined to urge towards war, etc etc. And the plain simple Realistic truths of the matter: oil, strategic importance in the region, etc.

[Ridiculas]

There are plenty of guys that fit that profile, the things they didn't have though................................ but personally I think this is too recent to be discussed here. we need a good 10-15 more years to be really sure what the hell happened here.

[gaius valerius]

There are plenty of guys that fit that profile, the things they didn't have though................................ but personally I think this is too recent to be discussed here. we need a good 10-15 more years to be really sure what the hell happened here.

Actually, amen to that. This is indeed very recent and thus coloured history. The problem for a historian is quite paradoxical in this case. One should assume the more recent an event, the better it can be known. Yet this is untrue. For one the historian can hardly hope to be 'distant' from his object of interest being that he probably in one way or another has been affected by it. Another problem is that of documents. Archives are always locked for a large amount of time (I think this can run into several decades or centuries for that matter), so this generally objective documents cannot be employed either.


Hence... the paradoxical problem that the more recent the event, the harder it is to describe from a historical point of view. What's left is then speculation, probability, in other words, stuff for the political academy or mudpit imo.