The Flawed Logic That Produced the War Is Alive and Well |
Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. “Over two decades, Americans have stubbornly refused to move on from Iraq,” Stephen Wertheim writes in a new essay for Foreign Affairs. This is in large part because the United States has not truly reckoned with the causes of the war, he argues. The decision to invade Iraq “stemmed from the pursuit of global primacy”—and despite the chaos, destruction, and death that the war in Iraq caused, “the quest for primacy endures,” Wertheim writes. Washington is “caught in a doom loop, lurching from self-inflicted problems to even bigger self-inflicted problems, holding up the latter while covering up the former.” And today, as tensions mount with rivals such as Russia and China, the desire to defend its preeminent power position continues to “put the United States on a collision course with other countries.” The “next Iraq,” Wertheim warns, “could well take the form of a great-power war.” Read more from Foreign Affairs on the U.S. invasion of Iraq and how it continues to haunt the Middle East and shape American leadership:
“Why Iraqi Democracy Never Stood a Chance” by Renad Mansour “Why the Press Failed on Iraq” by John Walcott “The Middle East’s Lost Decades” by Maha Yahya “How the Iraq War Taught Me About the Limits of American Power” by Max Boot “The Right—and Wrong—Lessons of the Iraq War” by Hal Brands “Why America Remains Trapped by False Dreams of Hegemony” by Andrew J. Bacevich |
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