US foreign policy has been defined by its schizoid nature. A nation forged in revolution against an imperial colossus has for two centuries struggled to accept that it has taken the mantle of its historical nemesis. Yet even a teenage superhero can understand that with great power comes great responsibility. For a superpower, foreign policy requires constant investment in far more than kevlar and jet-fuel.
On 11th September 2001, I watched events in the US with the same slack-jawed horror as much of the rest of the world. I also found myself fervently hoping that such a brazen expression of hatred for the US would make the Bush administration pause for thought. Had reckless foreign policy adventures created dangerous new enemies? Should those policies be jettisoned or re-thought? How in the aftermath of Cold War victory had the US managed to lose the battle for hearts and minds so completely? This iconic outrage would after all come to define the early 21st century and should be made a cause for securing peace, not a new excuse for blundering and bloody foreign adventures.
The Bush response was distinguished only by its cynicism. The Afghan intervention was predictable and justifiable; the Taliban were one of the world’s most egregiously cruel regimes and there was an audit trail between Al-Qaeda and Kandahar. The Iraqi intervention however was based on a lie so monstrous that even Hitler would have blushed. Attempts to shore up this lie in the US and the UK were derisory, but almost as shocking as the dishonesty of statesmen was their public’s willing credulity.
To justify an aggressive and wholly imperial intervention in Iraq, Bush insinuated a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. Blair reinforced the Bush policy line, possibly in defiance of his own sensibilities, because acting as trusty sidekick to the US is the UK’s only remaining route to great power status. As if to prove that ignorance and hatred are good bedfellows, ordinary Americans not only approved of the intervention, they indulged in vociferous loathing for anyone at home or abroad who dissented. Seemingly without irony, those who didn’t tow the Bush line were castigated as enemies of freedom and democracy.
The 9/11 attack caused in the region of 3,000 civilian deaths. So far, the invasion of Iraq has caused in excess of 80,000 civilian deaths. Plainly, the Iraqi death toll was always going to be inconsequential; the deaths were less dramatic and more mundane than those searing images of New York, and in any case US politicians weren’t losing voters. Yet even for those who only consider coalition deaths noteworthy, nearly 4,000 US military personnel have died in Iraq since 2003. The nightmarish unravelling of Iraq was foreseeable but so intent was the Bush administration on staking its claim that it brushed aside any intelligence that didn’t fit its case and had no glimmer of a long-term plan for the reconstruction. It is telling that Bush’s great act of bathos, declaring ‘Mission Accomplished’ from the deck of USS Abraham Lincoln, happened almost five years ago.
This isn’t to say that Saddam Hussein wasn’t an ugly despot, but there are many despots in the world inflicting all manner of ills on their people without ever falling foul of the US. Indeed, the US, never squeamish about Realpolitik, was happy to support Saddam when he was a secular bulwark against Iranian clericalism. As FDR supposedly said of an earlier wicked ally, he “may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”
When Russian conscripts were the victims of militant Islamists in the shape of the Mujahideen, the US was happy to nurture them. Decades later, their heirs and torch-bearers have come down from the Hindu Kush with vengeful eyes fixed on their one-time benefactor. Ever generous, the US has given them a powerful recruiting sergeant: an illegal Western occupation of Iraq.
Like Wilson and FDR before them, the next White House incumbent will have to face the fact that however insular their public is, the US is a global power and its actions, omissions and outlook will have consequences at home and abroad for generations to come. As if their job weren’t difficult enough, Mr Bush has left them a great deal of repair work to do and should forfeit his deposit.
