Iraq war

Tuesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

How Dick Cheney made Donald Trump

Former vice president Dick Cheney, who died on Monday at age 84, loathed Donald Trump. In a 2022 election campaign ad for his daughter, Liz, a congresswoman from Wyoming, he declared: “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” Yet Cheney was more responsible for Trump’s rise than almost anyone else in the Republican establishment. He helped to mastermind the calamitous Iraq War and preached the unitary executive theory of the presidency. Instead of vilifying Cheney, MAGA-world should offer him a bouquet of appreciation. Recall that it was during the 2016 South Carolina primary that Trump first showed his real independence from the folderol surrounding the Iraq War.

dick cheney
Margaret Mitchell

Dick Cheney dies at 84

Former vice president Dick Cheney died last night aged 84. He arrived in Washington as a congressman for Wyoming, then became secretary for defense under George H.W. Bush and served for eight years as George W. Bush’s vice president. He was considered by many to have pulled the strings behind the Bush administration. What is perhaps his most lasting legacy is the “Cheney Doctrine,” which influenced America’s decision to engage in wars in the Middle East. He campaigned for a military response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which drove his conviction that any country, organization or individual that posed a threat to the US, or that might in the future, needed to be taken out.

Friday

Neal Pollack

John Bolton’s AOL chat with Iran

“John Bolton Surrenders To Federal Authorities” is a headline I could have only dreamed of seeing 20 years ago, but this morning it came true. Following yesterday’s grand-jury indictment of Bolton, the former Trump National Security Advisor and W. Bush Iraq War architect/manipulator gave himself up and pled not guilty in federal court on charges of mishandling classified information. But if Bolton isn’t guilty, I’m a high-stakes poker professional. The charges claimed that Bolton was “unlawfully hoarding” documents, that he sent classified information over grandpa communication medium AOL instant Messenger in 2018 and that he shared more than 1,000 pages of notes, while working on a memoir, with his wife and daughter, neither of whom had security clearances.

John Bolton

Thursday

Paul Wood

Saviour complex: Jonathan Powell is still trying to change the world

From our UK edition

In 2011, the Hampstead theatre put on an autobiographical play about a marriage strained by lies, betrayal and, as the exasperated wife says, the presence of ‘three of us’ in the relationship. The play was Loyalty by the journalist Sarah Helm, the third person was Tony Blair and the principal male character was a barely disguised Jonathan Powell, her husband and Blair’s chief of staff. The lies are about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and the betrayal occurs when the Powell character goes along with the war despite not ‘really’ believing in it, siding with Blair over his partner. Two decades on, Powell is Keir Starmer’s national security adviser and may have more influence over foreign policy than anyone in government after the Prime Minister himself.

Thursday

Paul Wood

‘Blood! Blood! Blood!’: the Battle of Fallujah twenty years on

The National Museum of the Marine Corps has built a replica of a street in Fallujah, the Iraqi city that American forces half-destroyed in order to save it, in a battle twenty years ago next month. The exhibit promises visitors an “interactive experience that puts them in the boots of a Marine as he kicks down the door of a suspected insurgent stronghold.” If you have a games console, you can play Six Days in Fallujah, a video game where you take the role of a Marine who narrates the action of a firefight that really happened. Fallujah has become a symbol of gritty heroism and sacrifice — or for critics of the Iraq war, occupation and war crimes. Either way, the battle is deeply lodged in the popular imagination.

Fallujah

Thursday

Peter Meijer

Tim Walz has played fast and loose with his military service record

In an era of declining trust, the military retains widespread public confidence — 61 percent as of a Gallup poll this year. Large majorities of Americans look up to those who wore the uniform and associate serving in the military with positive stereotypes like self-discipline, loyalty and responsibility. Politicians and our political system? Not so much. Only 26 percent of Americans have confidence in the presidency, and confidence in Congress stands at 9 percent. It’s no wonder that both parties recruit military veterans to run for office, hoping that the halo from their service will soften the sharp edges of political reality and garner crossover appeal come election day.

tim walz service

Wednesday

James Walton

Ambitious, bold and confusing: BBC4’s Corridors of Power – Should America Police the World? reviewed

From our UK edition

Narrated by Meryl Streep, Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? announced the scale of its ambition straight away. Before the opening titles, we’d already heard from Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright and the late Henry Kissinger. We’d also seen the lines drawn up as to how its bold subtitle might be answered. It is an authentically confusing programme, where any firm moral position doesn’t stay firm for long As Clinton put it, in 1945 a question emerged whose implications would dominate post-war US foreign policy: ‘Why didn’t we do more to try to prevent the transport of the Jews?’ The immediate response was the heartfelt yet potentially glib declaration: ‘Never again.’ But what would that actually mean in practice?

Tuesday

Chris Mullin

One damned thing after another: Britain’s crisis-ridden century so far

From our UK edition

Asked about the greatest challenges he faced as prime minister, Harold Macmillan is said to have replied: ‘Events, dear boy, events.’ The first quarter of this century has seen no shortage of events that have blown prime ministers off course. There was Tony Blair by 9/11 and the resulting war in Iraq; Gordon Brown by the financial crisis of 2007-8; David Cameron and Theresa May by Brexit; and Boris Johnson by Covid. With the exception of May, none of these people had any inkling, on taking office, of the bolts from the blue that would ultimately define their premierships.

Thursday

Carl J. Schramm

Joe Biden’s non-defense policy

No one can say the Iraq War was under-discussed. On the eve of the 2003 invasion, President George W. Bush and his advisors explained and defended Operation Iraqi Freedom to, among others, British prime minister Tony Blair, Saudi ambassador prince Bandar bin Sultan, the United Nations Security Council and skeptical members of Congress, the media and the American public. Bush even faced opposition from his own secretary of state, Colin Powell, who cautioned the president against invading Iraq with what would come to be known as the “Pottery Barn Rule”: if you break it, you own it. An experienced military leader, General Powell understood the complexities of war and the importance of having an exit strategy.

ukraine war biden defense

Tuesday

John R. MacArthur

Why do neoliberals get let off the Iraq War hook?

Given the worldwide climate of political intolerance, I often try to deflect hostility by prefacing my comments with the old saw that “reasonable people can disagree.” As a strong believer in intellectual freedom and Socratic dialogue, I do in fact feel duty-bound to listen to the other side, or sides, of an argument. Yet there’s one subject about which I’m as close-minded as the wokest opponent of liberal debate — a topic about which I won’t brook any disagreement because there simply isn’t any reasonable form it can take: that is, George W. Bush’s and British prime minister Tony Blair’s disastrous decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and its deadly, still hugely malignant consequences in the Middle East.

invasion

Tuesday

Daniel DePetris

On the anniversary of the Iraq invasion, spare us the sermons

Twenty-one years ago today, the United States committed its worst foreign-policy mistake in generations: invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, the despot who ruled the Arab country with an iron fist for nearly a quarter-century. The entire operation was supposed to be a “cakewalk,” in which the mighty US military, stocked with the best technology and weapons the world had to offer, would pummel a decrepit Iraqi army that was hobbled by international sanctions for the better part of a decade. The mood at the time was serious but stoic. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary, argued that the entire war wouldn’t last more than five months.

iraq war

Sunday

Clement Knox

An impressive examination of the conjoined fates of Iraq and the United States

In July 4, 1821, secretary of state John Quincy Adams gave a speech to Congress on American foreign policy. He said of the United States that “wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” For the first 150 years of the republic, its leaders dutifully observed Adams’s counsel. But after Woodrow Wilson’s intervention in World War One, American policy has tacked in the opposite direction. For over a century America has indeed been going abroad, searching for monsters to destroy.

Iraq

Wednesday

Douglas Murray

Was I right about Iraq?

From our UK edition

Back in March there was a glut of pieces about the 2003 Iraq war. The 20th anniversary seemed to much of the political and pundit class to be the perfect time to return to this scorched landscape. A number of people asked me to throw in my views and I failed, for two reasons. Firstly because, as some readers will know, I hate anniversaries and the lazy hook they provide to the news cycle. Secondly, because each time I sat down to try to write about those days I found myself unusually conflicted. Those of us who defended the war have spent 20 years filled with ‘if onlys’ The reason partly relates to the wonderful, heroic former Labour MP Ann Clwyd, who died last week at the age of 86. After the war’s height, as the insurgency had begun, I went to Iraq with Ann.

Wednesday

Daniel DePetris

It’s time for Congress to take back its war powers

On March 29, more than twenty years after the United States commenced Operation Shock and Awe in Baghdad, the Senate made history by repealing the military force authorization that green-lit the operation. The bill, which also aims to kill a previous 1991 authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF, against Iraq during the Gulf War, now heads to the House of Representatives where it faces an uncertain future.  On the face of it, repealing both measures would seem like an ordinary event. Saddam Hussein, after all, has been dead for over sixteen years, hanged by an Iraqi court for a litany of crimes against his own people. His regime dissolved within three weeks of the 2003 invasion.

state of the union
bioweapon labs
Slavoj Zizek

Secret bioweapon labs are Putin’s MacGuffin 

Some commentators have already noted the strange homology between Russia’s evocation of “secret bioweapon labs” in Ukraine and the US evocation of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which in both cases were used to justify military attack. It’s not that the US was unsure if Saddam had WMDs; they positively knew he did not have them, which is why they risked a ground offensive in Iraq, rather than sticking to air bombing. The nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction perfectly fulfill the role of a “MacGuffin” in Alfred Hitchcock’s films. A MacGuffin is “an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance,” per Merriam-Webster.

Wednesday

Daniel DePetris

Marking twenty years of America’s most endless war

The Iraqi people have been through plenty over the last twenty years: a regime change operation against Saddam Hussein; a jihadist insurgency against American occupation forces; a sectarian civil war between Shia and Sunni armed groups; Iranian political interference; an Islamic State rampage; a US-organized counter-ISIS coalition that destroyed the terrorist group’s territorial caliphate. According to Brown University’s Cost of War Project, at least 275,000 Iraqi civilians died in war-related violence between 2003 and 2019. On March 19, the US will mark the twenty-year anniversary of Operation Shock and Awe, the massive air campaign against Saddam’s Iraqi army that paved the way for the ensuing armored drive to Baghdad.

foreign policy

Wednesday

Boris Johnson

Bush is leading us to tragedy (2002)

From our UK edition

It's 20 years since the clamour for the invasion of Iraq was at its loudest. Boris Johnson, The Spectator's then editor, spoke to the Saudi ambassador to the UK, Ghazi Algosaibi. You can read more on our fully digitised archive. 'No, no,' says the Saudi ambassador. 'This is how you do it. You cannot lift your arm above the shoulder, and you must do it sideways.' He moves alongside, a big man with a faint resemblance to Leon Brittan, and makes a thwacking motion. Meet Ghazi Algosaibi, 62, a poet and author, the Arab world's leading envoy to London, who has recently earned not just a personal rebuke from Jack Straw, but the demands of the Jewish Board of Deputies that he be expelled from the country.

Tuesday

Jeff Groom

No one wants to join the military anymore

Last week marked the 246th birthday of the United States. This year also marks, according to Lieutenant General Thomas Spoehr of the Heritage Foundation, when we “question the sustainability of the all-volunteer force.” As reported in late June by NBC, all branches of the military are falling short of their 2022 recruiting goals. The Army, for instance, has met only 40 percent of its enlisted recruitment target for the fiscal year, which for the military services ends on September 30. Those in the Pentagon tasked with attracting candidates have listed reasons they are struggling to meet their mission: lack of eligibility, Covid restrictions putting a damper on outreach, competition from a robust civilian employment market, and a lack of a desire to serve.

military

Tuesday

Daniel DePetris

Is Putin nuts?

As Russian forces level Ukrainian cities with artillery, missiles and airstrikes, there's a concerted effort to get inside the mind of Vladimir Putin: from pundits, former US national security officials and current heads of government. What could possibly get the man to stop the bombardment and support a ceasefire? Is Putin intent on conquering all of Ukraine? Or is there some combination of concessions the Ukrainian government and the West could offer that would end the war and bring about a full Russian troop withdrawal? The fact is none of us know what Putin’s endgame is. Putin’s own advisors, especially those kept out of the inner circle, may not even understand what the Russian leader is planning.

crazy nuts

Wednesday

Leon Hadar

Noninterventionists never win arguments

I’ve been thinking about where I was on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and my memories of the event are quite depressing. What have we learned? As a research fellow at the Cato Institute at that time, I was working with other analysts preparing research, authoring commentaries, publishing op-ed articles and giving interviews to the broadcast media, warning about the consequences of the coming American military conquest in the Middle East. It's not polite to toot one’s own horn, but we were right.

terror