‘Tell me, how does this end?’ asked US general David Petraeus during first push to Baghdad in 2003
he French statesman Georges Clemenceau once said: “War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.” In the case of the invasion of, however, the war that began 20 years ago started in victory and has ended in a series of catastrophes.
. He recalls Blair saying to him at the outset: “I know you think I should not do it, but I have to. I know it’s going to be bad. Tell me how bad it’s going to be”. Dodge explained: “In London and Washington, there was no one who had the first idea about Iraq, but they were planning to occupy it and run the place. It was hubris of the highest order.”The breathtaking mishandling of the biggest attempt at liberal interventionism since Vietnam is now acknowledged by almost all those involved.
The war strengthened Iran and its proxies across the Middle East, and then, as the bloodshed continued, created in the west a wariness about military intervention that was to help the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, survive an armed rebellion and giveIf other Arab leaders needed a reason to suppress the threat posed by the Arab Spring in 2011, the chaos of democracy in Iraq gave them that excuse.
Indeed, Dr Patricia Lewis of the Chatham House thinktank argues that US policy in Iraq has already become such fertile propaganda territory for Russia that it would be better for the US to get out there first with a mea culpa. “Decisions were made on the basis of false information, and it is best to be open about that so the impact of Russian disinformation is minimised,” she said.
From Putin’s perspective, everything the US did subsequently – including flirting with Islamists during the Arab Spring, misleading him over UN authorisation for the toppling of Gaddafi in Libya, siding with groups that included jihadists against Assad’s Syria and support for Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan protests – were signs of a country that saw no distinction between a “rules-based order” and American hegemony.
Hamidreza Azizi, visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, says the 2003 invasion “drastically changed Iran’s threat perception”, where its leaders saw proof of Washington’s desire to embark on a strategy of active interventions. “The most immediate impact was that support for non-state-armed actors came to form a central feature in Iran’s military strategy,” he said.
Iraqi Shia pilgrims march in Karbala in April 2003, the first time in 30 years that they could do so.But it was not necessary for Iraq’s government to have behaved in such a sectarian way after the 2005 elections. The US had handpicked Nour al-Maliki to be prime minister in 2006 in the belief that he would not act in a sectarian or excessively pro-Iranian way.
Barack Obama in 2013, when he pushed for military action against Syria over alleged chemical attacks.That American disengagement took many twists and turns, but the decisive point came when the west, haunted by the shadow of the Iraq war, refused to punish Syria in 2013 after Assad used chemical weapons against rebel groups, crossing Obama’s stated red line. First the British parliament, then Angela Merkel and finally the US Congress rejected military action.
Rice pursued the theme in a speech in Cairo in June 2005: “For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.” The Bush government identified civil society organisations, including even briefly the Muslim Brotherhood, and financially supported NGOs through its “democracy promotion” agenda.
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