The War on Terror became an international issue when President Bush stated, ‘Every nation in every region now has a decision to make,’ he said in a national address. ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.’ The invasion of Iraq became one if not the most controversial international foreign policy decision made by the United States and the United Kingdom in recent history which was accompanied and triggered by The War on Terror. Up to this day, controversy and speculations lie around if this international action was just or falls under the category of Jus ad Bellum. Jus ad Bellum and just war theory as we discussed in our class can be summed up in the idea of the accounts of St. Augustine wherein it determines and judges whether a state may have an option to enter a war and fight the war which became a pivotal core of the modern international legal system. This is where the international community comes in and either supports or opposes an action made by a country to enter a war with one country. Jus ad Bellum surrounds the idea that for one state to declare war, a state must have a just cause, the correct intentions, have used and exhausted all other forms of diplomacy, and or have no choice other than to protect itself from an imminent attack or danger. Now that we’ve established what Jus ad Bellum means, let’s focus and try to anal
yze the situation and the justifications of the United States and the United Kingdom for invading Iraq and their dictator leader, Sadam Hussein. The War on Terror precedented this attack because of the 9/11 attack which made the United States interested in the politics and geopolitical landscape in the Middle East. Due to prior events and actions, the United States government’s most important national policy became to stamp out and eradicate ‘global terrorism at its core’. Because of the gravity of the 9/11 attacks, the United States justified its attack on Iraq on that the very essence of a preemptive and preventive strike. They justified their action by foreshadowing the possibility of future strikes may use Weapons of Mass Destruction or more commonly known as (WMD). This became the grounds and justification used by the United States to engage in a physical campaign globally while using all their might to engage states, organizations, and or individuals who are either hosting, supporting, financing, or helping terrorism. Since the aforementioned clause, the first target of the United States became of that the allies of the attackers which was Al ‘Qaeda, then they attacked Afghanistan and the Taliban because that was where the leader of Al ‘Qaeda was hiding which was Osama Bin Laden. Then this became the first phase of the wars that precedented them.