From all of the turmoil in the Persian Gulf, the most controversial issue is certainly the economic sanctions imposed upon Iraq. These sanctions, constructed by the United States and supported by the United Nations, were meant to target Saddam Hussein and his regimes, but they have had tremendous and terrible effects on the civilian population of the country. Although their purposes were originally sound and honorable, the sanctions that were imposed upon Iraq have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths throughout that nation, and their legitimacy and necessity are a worldwide topic of speculation. A change is regulation is far past due. The United States and United Nations must revamp their policies to save the lives of the remaining Iraqi citizens and to more exclusively target the Iraqi government, if they will not lift the current sanctions completely. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran; the Iran-Iraq war began. At this time, the United States (US) was allied with Iraq. This was not an alliance that revealed the feelings the US had about Iraq, but rather about Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran controlled a rapidly-growing military force, and although the US had no reason to try to squelch this power, the Iraqi invasion served as the perfect opportunity to exercise a tactic which would be later titled “dual containment”. The strategy of dual containment entails siding with one of two opponents to prolong a conflict they have with each other, of which the home country is not a main part of. This keeps both sides occupied with each other, and at the end of the conflict, both nations would be substantially weaker, leaving the home country, in this case the US, much at ease. The war ended in 1988, with Iraq as the victor. Iraq immediately was on the move again, targeting Kuwait for invasion. But this time they would not have US support, because the Kuwaiti army was a small fraction of the military power that Saddam Hussein contro...
