ABSTRACT
The United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the centre-piece of a far-reaching and ambitious plan to re-work post-Cold War international relations.1 The removal of Saddam Hussein was designed to send an unmistakable message not only to the ruling elites of the Middle East but to the post-colonial world more generally. The right to sovereign non-intervention born of decolonisation was now only to be granted if a new set of responsibilities were met. A new democratic regime in Iraq was meant to signal the lengths America would go to in a post-9/11 world to impose the Bush doctrine on recalcitrant regimes. However, what the neoconservatives at the heart of the Bush administration planned as a short sharp demonstration of America’s unrivalled hegemony turned out to be a bloody occupation mired in state collapse and civil war. After two terms in the White House, George W. Bush will leave the quagmire that Iraq has become to his successor to sort out. Far from being a triumph, the invasion has highlighted profound short-comings in the projection of American power out of area. Tragically it has been the long-suffering people of Iraq who have had to pay the greatest price for this exercise in neoconservative hubris. After suffering 35 years of brutal dictatorship and over a decade of the harshest sanctions ever imposed, they now face a violent and profoundly uncertain future. As US public opinion increasingly demands that the US severs its ties with Iraq, the costs will be borne by the Iraqi people as they face continued intercommunal strife, civil war and state collapse.
