‘I was not an enthusiast about getting US forces and going into Iraq,’ Dick Cheney said in 1997, looking back on the First Gulf War.
‘I was not an enthusiast about getting US forces and going into Iraq,’ Dick Cheney said in 1997, looking back on the First Gulf War. ‘I felt there was a real danger that you would get bogged down in a long drawn-out conflict, that this was a dangerous, difficult part of the world.’
How, half a decade later, was that prescience brushed aside by governments on both sides of the Atlantic in the rush for regime change? The Chilcot Inquiry, whose committee of the great and the good has teased out much about the musings of politicians and mandarins in once smoke-filled rooms, may or may not find the answer. This fascinating compendium of documents from the war, edited by a team of specialists in Middle East affairs and US politics, will meanwhile help the rest of us to decide for ourselves.
Beginning with the early circumspection of Cheney and others, they show how the genesis of the conflict lay as much in the realm of ideas as in calculations made behind closed doors. The manifestos of policy wonks in its opening pages echo in presidential soundbites by its end. Along the way there are White House memoranda, memoirs of the extraordinarily rendered, and diktats from both American and al-Qa’eda commanders. Together, they read like a parable of how political rhetoric conspires to make facts — and wars.
The Iraq Papers finds the ideological origins of the invasion in the end of history. Writings of Robert Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz and William Kristol from the 1990s illuminate how neo-conservatism was born of America’s quest to find a new world role after the Cold War.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in