Monday, March 20 marked the twentieth anniversary for America’s invasion in Iraq. The American Conservative will post reflections on the war from the authors this writer sought to understand a senseless war to commemorate the end of American unipolarity.
These pieces may come from people who have personally experienced the war and America’s nation building efforts. TAC today featured pieces by Joshua Mitchell and Peter Van Buren.
Van Buren’s anecdotal piece “Memories from Baghdad” describes how Van Buren, his State Department colleagues, would spend their time in Baghdad in the late aughts. Van Buren’s and his coworkers’ literal drunkenness mirrors the ideology intoxication that permeated America’s entire effort in Iraq. This hangover is very hard to bear.
Mitchell was the American University of Iraq–Sulaimani’s acting chancellor from 2008 to 2010. Mitchell was the acting chancellor of the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani from 2008 to 2010. His latest contribution to TAC is “The Iraq War, and the Fate of Nation-States In the Twenty-First Century.” It argues that instead of reevaluating, the institutions charged with shaping the future stewards of American Power have doubled down. They are continuing to teach their students how the world should be, rather than how it is. The refusal of U.S. foreign policymakers to understand the cultures and nations of the world will only result in more failures like the one in Iraq.
Who has profited from the U.S.’s failures in the Middle East region? Andrew Bacevich correctly asserts China is America’s greatest challenger. The global south is increasingly turning to China for financial and political support. The global south has received a strong message from America’s embrace for totalizing neoliberalism after the end of Cold War. This was in large part reflected in the Iraq War and other interventions throughout the Middle East.
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The political establishment at home is angry that the message was received. Bacevich points to the New York Times report on China’s efforts to repair diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran. This claim claims that America is “now found themselves on the sidelines during an moment of significant change,” but it “offends American establishment to have any other than ourselves exercise initiative in a region Washington routinely categorizes to be vitally important to the United States.”
It’s difficult to find someone outside of Bill Kristol who supports the Iraq War twenty years ago. However, many of these people have turned their backs on Iraq and are now all in favor of Ukraine.
TAC is more aware of America’s failures in Iraq than we are of ourselves.
