...Karl E. Meyer Copyright © 2004 World Policy Institute 2004 C#DA The Perfect Debacle On present evidence, barring a miraculous turnabout, the odds are strong that America’s Iraqi war will be remembered as one of those rare episodes in military history: a perfect de­ bacle...

... and friends of Maliki, members of the Dawa Party, other Iraqi political figures, U.S. military officers, and current and former U.S. officials. © World Policy Institute 2013 2013 World Policy Institute AL7OB-ONE Baghdad—It was December 2010, and Nouri Kamal al-Maliki sat in a faux palace...

... policy tool that the Bush adminis­ that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s pursuit tration has never been entirely comfortable of nuclear weapons represents the greatest with— concerted, consistent international threat to peace and stability in the world diplomacy.2 Specifically...

... the Iraqi Scien­ intelligence agencies and to secure the coop­ tists Immigration Act of 2003. Weapons in­ eration of international organizations, Wash­ spectors had long argued that testimony ington should also pursue agreements aimed from Iraqi scientists was key to penetrating at affording whistle...

... all the Iraqi violations of Security the elimination of discrimination against Council resolutions to justify collective ac­ women go unratified. tion. But in the end, the speech was more of Other international bodies have been an ultimatum to the Security Council than...

... opin­ until early December, and then admitted to ion, heard from its friends in the Arab a press conference that this provoked “the world that the sanctions against Iraq were perception problem for the U.N., or the inflicting real hardship on Iraqi civilians. perception of conflict of interests...

... 91 contains the ruins of five millennia of continuous urban culture. The result is evident in the thousands of hillocks that adorn the mostly level landscape; each is an entombed city. On January 24, 2003, on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom, a delegation of scholars tried to acquaint...

... expressed no empathy for the trict. In the final battle for Berlin 300,000 Iraqi military dead of the Gulf War, and Soviet soldiers perished. The East German ever since no official estimate of those dead government erected giant heroic statues has emanated from the Pentagon. For years and stone...

...Christopher Reeve © World Policy Institute 2015 2015 World Policy Institute Cairo—Mona Iraqi, an outspoken filmmaker turned television presenter, goes in for the kill. She had been staking out a Cairo bathhouse for some time. A hidden camera had recorded enough damning evidence to condemn...

... by even looked at the issue o f occupation. Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press re­ —-Jim Lehrer porter Charles J. Hanley, whose fall 2003 story on the torture of Iraqis in American In other words, if the government isn’t...

.... Consequently, have not turned out the way they were once despite the dramatic spread of democratic envisioned. Two years after the arrival of the governance (depending upon the criteria, as Americans, the goal of creating a viable many as three dozen new democracies have Iraqi democracy remains...

... day’s Iraq, the very concept of representative curity Council. The war on terror would be and orderly government, and all those who reinforced by punitive example, by the uni­ work for it, Iraqis and foreigners alike, are lateral prevention of hostile acts against the at present under murderous...

... Hussein, and the Iraqi people would thank us for it. In one of his recent weekly radio addresses, President Bush said, without the slightest trace of irony, that if the people of the Middle East wanted to know what a free country was like, they had only to look at Iraq. That fragile construct...

... the Iraqi police in Jor­ grinned at his father, who also had a sima dan, and began observing the routes the on his forehead. The father was beaming Americans took to and from work. The proudly. Thinking Like a Jihadist 1 I asked...

... interna­ tionalism in the twentieth century. The Iraqi Test Deterrence won’t work against a mad­ The immediate test of the American com­ man such as Saddam, say the advocates of mitment to the norms and institutions of preventive...

... and bombed from the air The were no Iraqis per se, that history, geogra­ events in Mesopotamia shook the British phy, and religion pulled them apart. Wilson government badly. “We are at our wits’ proposed making Mesopotamia a formal end,” said Churchill, “to find a single British...

... began its crusade to topple the nal that Washington alone would in the end Iraqi regime. decide the correct response and that the al­ lies were expected to line up behind Ameri­ “Imperialism Lite” ca’s strategies, President Bush declared: “Ei­ At the very moment Washington was de­ ther you...

... ample incen­ to the country’s economic stability. During tives to acquire nuclear weapons, given its the past two decades, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq dangerous and unstable neighborhood. has presented a formidable threat to Tehran, However, despite persistent chaos on its as the Iraqi dictator...