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I believe the most important challenge facing the United States today is the attempt to rebuild Iraq after its invasion. At the beginning of May, President Bush all but declared a US victory in Iraq. However, the people of Iraq continued to live in despair. The Pentagon failed to provide a post-war plan for this crippled nation, and given the turmoil and violence that has recently erupted in the streets, it has become frightening clear that, despite winning the war, the US was in danger of losing the peace. Since the end of the Gulf War, the continued U.S. and U.N. sanctions against Iraq have been the center of international controversy. Over the last year, the continued threat of Saddam Hussein in the Middle East has resulted in the call for continued interventions that have also been at the center of debates. The United Nations sanction program against Iraq was designed to impact the economy, thereby limiting the actions of the countries leader and creating an atmosphere to direct change (Gordon 18). While there is considerable research that suggests that the economic impacts of these sanctions have hurt the general population more than the leadership, there are a number of solid arguments in support for continued U.N.-directed sanctions and military support for these sanctions by the United States. Against Sanctions The arguments against sanctions in Iraq are not based in the military issues or the problems of peacekeeping, but instead in claims that the continued actions in Iraq violate humanitarian principles (Gordon 18). In the Spring of 1999, the continued U.S. bombings in Iraq drew attention away from existing debates about the nature of U.N directed sanctions and their impact on the Iraqi populous as a whole (Gordon 18). The imposing of economic sanctions against Iraq under the directives of Articles 41 and 42 of the U. N. Charter was based in the commitment to peacekeeping efforts and were based in the belief that by crippling the economy of Iraq, it would be possible to bring Saddam Hussein into complicity with U. N. directives (Gordon 18). The criticisms of the sanctions stem not from the belief that the United Nations should not have intervened or even from claims against the directives of the U.S. military, but instead as an extension of the United Nations commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other documents created to determine the basic rights of all people to health, food, water, shelter and safety (Gordon 18).
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