MESOP MIDEAST WATCH : THE FATAL MISTAKES OF THE US INVASION IN IRAQ

THE UNTOLD STORY BY FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAY 2023

The impulse to turn the page on the chapter of American history that led to the invasion of Iraq and the beginning of the “forever wars” is strong. But understanding how the United States made a series of catastrophic policy decisions, for which it is still paying, is crucial to avoiding similar mistakes in the future. When it comes to Iraq, there remains a central mystery: who was ultimately responsible for the decision to disband the Iraqi army and de-Baathify the government, orders that unleashed years of violence and disorder?

In a new essay for Foreign Affairs, the journalist and historian Garrett M. Graff tries to get to the bottom of this question. Graff, whose book Watergate: A New History was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for History, notes that, at the time, senior U.S. leaders such as CIA Director George Tenet and Secretary of State Colin Powell did not even know where these directives had come from or who had approved them. But Graff, “after piecing together memoirs from key participants, archival documents, and fresh interviews with a dozen former top U.S. officials,” finally offers a more complete origin story. These decisions “are best thought of not as errors that, if avoided, could have saved Iraq,” Graff writes. “Instead, they were early indicators that the Bush administration’s grand visions for the country were merely paper wishes, out of touch with the post-invasion reality.”

FULL ESSAY AND REPORT Ordnungen der Unordnung: Wer hat die irakische Armee aufgelöst und ihre Bürokratie entbaathifiziert? (foreignaffairs.com)