How the Iraq War Became a Threat to American Democracy

Years will prove him right. millions more would have died HIV/AIDS in Africa If Mr. Bush had not defied the isolationist wing of his party, which once disdained foreign aid, and pressured Congress to spend billions of dollars on what had become, at least pre-Covid, That was the largest commitment ever made by a nation to fight a single disease. Mr. Bush’s initiative was not only compassionate but wise. I wish this was his defining work.

In the same speech, Mr. Bush used some of his sentences about fighting AIDS to explain the threat Saddam Hussein presented to America and his own people. “If it is not evil,” he said in his Moral Key, “then evil has no meaning.” He said Secretary of State Colin Powell would soon provide the UN Security Council with intelligence about Iraq’s weapons programs and ties to terrorists. But he made it clear that, if he deemed it necessary, he would act against Saddam without the blessing of the United Nations.

take a bite out of millions who move: An Iraqi child who lost both his parents to an American missile; A man with a sack over his head and his arms outstretched, twisting wire with his fingers, standing on a box in the Americans’ Abu Ghraib prison; An American veteran who can’t stop drinking, can’t maintain a relationship, can’t sit without his back against the wall. Any one is enough to make you wish you could run back down the halls of history to tell Mr. Bush to stop. You don’t even need to pause to survey the big picture—the empowerment of Iran, the rise of Islamic State, the metastasis of the Syrian civil war, the taint of America’s image, and its own image as competent, honest, and decent.

There were certainly voices raised against the invasion, but America’s interlocking political, security and media elite—its establishment—rallied behind it. During a Senate debate on Iraq-war authorization, Senator Joe Biden recalled the “sins of Vietnam” and the “failure of two presidents with the American people” at the cost of that war. They then voted for the measure. Three years later, he called that vote a mistake.

Not all of America’s woes can be traced back to that deadly invasion, when arrogance instead of America’s magnanimity – the flip side of its idealism – became its global calling-card. The global financial meltdown at the end of that decade precipitated the failure of the establishment. But the Iraq War pushed America down the path of Donald Trump.

Barack Obama represented the hope of a swift change from Mr. Bush, yet the two leaders were more like each other than the next president. He followed the conventions of American politics, perhaps unaware of how brittle they had become: that expertise mattered; The press, though flawed, was after the truth; The meritocracy was real; That not everyone was just out for the money and power. They both promoted two central ideals of American public life: that America had reasons beyond the pursuit of raw national interest in the world, and that at home the national interest superseded the political.

Mr. Trump told Americans what he had suspected, that it was all nonsense. America should have taken Iraq’s oil. Generals can be fools, and even so-called war heroes can be losers. America should use more severe forms of torture than waterboarding. China was raping America while its leaders did nothing. The press lied. The experts lied. Politicians, of course, lie all the time. The establishment was out for itself. If you don’t believe that corruption and selfishness are essential elements of human behavior then you were a sucker. When Trump was asked how he could defend Vladimir Putin, Trump said, “You think our country is that innocent?”

Mr. Biden, a throwback in so many ways, is trying as president restore the idea of ​​American idealism, America is again to be the guardian of a rules-based international order. Much has been made about the administration’s decision to share intelligence about what was to come, on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet this is what Mr. Powell did in greater detail at the United Nations. The difference was that this time the intelligence was correct. This time America has matched its words and actions. It has sought and maintained support within the United Nations. It has led competently in Ukraine, if not in Afghanistan, and it means what it says about rights and democracy. So far.

Who is trustworthy?

Mr Biden recently recalled how, when he assured European leaders two years ago that the US was back in the fight against autocracy and climate change, France’s Emmanuel Macron replied: “How long?” Mr. Biden is right to feel haunted by that challenge. If Mr. Trump has his way with the Republican Party, and he usually does, it will swing from the imagination of just 20 years ago, to advocating its surrender to Russian dominance in Europe. Will swallow

At home, there may be a return to idealism, but it is only on the surface. On the right, the American greatness school has yet to incorporate Trumpism into an ideology of more than grandiose self-interest. On the left, identity politics has given meritocracy elites—New Socialists included—a license to ignore class, celebrate their own knowledge, and feel contempt for poor white Americans. to do. Americans’ embrace of comforting ideologies is making them even more righteous and credible than they were on the eve of the Iraq War, provided the propaganda is on their part.

Mr. Bush is said to have no regrets about the Iraq War. he should. In the service of her decency rather than her arrogance, her tenacity could have lived on as an example for a better America.

Read more from Lexington, our columnist on American politics:

Why have America’s leaders stopped caring about schools? (16 March)

America’s government has not been “weaponized” (March 9)

Biden’s big bet on big government (2 March)

Also: How the Lexington Column got its name

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Updated: May 31, 2023, 03:34 PM IST