US Coalition against Saddam Hussein - Hard Power

The conflict started on March 19, 2003 when the US coalition initiated war with Iraq. They initiated war because they thought that Iraq, who's dictator was Saddam Hussein, were building or already had weapons capable of doing a lot of damage. Things started to heat up around an hour and a half after the deadline the US gave Hussein to leave Iraq or war would start. The first targets the coalition hit were militarily advantageous to take out. They were hit by Tomahawk cruise missiles deployed by US bombers that came from ships in the Persian Gulf. Iraq obviously did not appreciate this and we angered very much by this action. Even though the US did this and Hussein had been talking about how the US would regret war with Iraq, Hussein immediately went into hiding after the US declared war and invaded. In response to this, the coalition was able to dethrone Hussein's regime within just three weeks. The conflict was officially ended on May 1, 2003, although guerrilla war has taken the place of normal warfare since victory was announced by the US. This is an example of Hard Power because extreme military action was taken to fix this problem. There have been people who have said that Hard Power was not the best route to take with the Iraq conflict, and instead a combination of both Soft and Hard power would have been much more beneficial. In the end, Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging on December 30, 2006. One more important note is that no large weapons that could cause a lot of damage were found in Iraq, which either means we did not find them, or they were not even there.'

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/war-in-iraq-begins