ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Iraq policy is an example of an accelerating – and pernicious – trend in American foreign policy in which American interests are increasingly defined in narrowly partisan terms for narrowly partisan gains. In other words, the "meaning" of Iraq problem is increasingly defined in terms of party politics and not in terms of divergent understandings of appropriate uses of American power. The chapter looks at two periods in American policy towards Iraq: 1998 and 2002–2004. It also argues that American foreign policy towards Iraq was co-opted by partisan politics and that Bush administration policies in Iraq were shaped as much by "facts on the ground" in American electoral politics as they were by the military "facts on the ground" in Iraq. As President Harry S. Truman put it in 1948, "foreign policy should be the policy of the whole nation and not the policy of one party or other – partisanship should stop at water's edge".
