How Neoconservatism Led the US to Invade Iraq

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4.6 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

If you ask Democrats why the US invaded Iraq in 2003, many will say that President George W. Bush cynically lied about weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, some Republicans will say that President Bush meant well, but had been led astray by faulty intelligence.

As we pass the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, both of these narratives persist — and both distort the past, according to New York Times columnist Max Fisher. Fisher argues that the invasion was instead simply the natural unfolding of the neoconservative worldview. In this week's pod, we revisit his 2018 conversation with Brooke to unpack the hubris behind this worldview and examine how it grew from an esoteric, academic ideology into a force that still shapes American policies and minds today.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, I'm Michael Longer and this is the On the Media Midweek podcast.
0:05.3	It was 20 years ago this week that President George W. Bush announced the beginning of the
0:11.1	war in Iraq, setting off an invasion and occupation that cast a long grim shadow.
0:18.2	On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance
0:24.0	to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war.
0:28.2	These are opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign.
0:33.0	Broad indeed, especially as the decades passed, and those responsible refuse to leave the spotlight.
0:39.9	Take for instance John Bolton, the hawkish talking head for Fox, and the former UN ambassador
0:45.6	who made a brief cameo in government as Trump's third national security adviser.
0:50.6	We know the ambassador very well.
0:53.0	He was one of the cheerleaders for the Iraq invasion in 2003 which ended disastrously
0:58.6	unlike me who feels very guilty about my support of bad invasion back in those days.
1:03.4	At the time it made sense.
1:05.4	Well, we like to think so.
1:07.6	The ambassador on apologetic about it.
1:09.5	He still believes it was a good idea.
1:11.4	Alda was correct because as we cling to what we like to think about Iraq, there's a crucial
1:17.4	lesson still unlearned.
1:20.1	In 2018, on the 15th anniversary of the start of the conflict, Brook spoke to New York
1:25.8	Times columnist Max Fisher who, as Brook put it at the time, gently schooled us.
1:32.0	I think if you ask most Americans, how did this war actually start?
1:38.1	Democrats will typically tell you, well, George W. Bush for cynical reasons wanted to go
	...

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