The mission expanded: create a modern democracy, a modern society and, above all, a modern military in a country with little history of any of those things.Ī new generation of U.S. No modern, rebuilt Iraqi nation has emerged.Īnd now the country faces the dark at the end of the tunnel in Afghanistan, where lying and self-delusion have continued for 20 years.Īn initial mission intended to remove the Taliban and close the al-Qaida training camps succeeded, though Osama bin Laden slipped away for another 10 years. American hubris ran the full course as we invaded another country, overthrew its government and aimed to build a new nation, all of which have kept American troops in a dysfunctional Iraq for 18 years.Īnd the truth, which insisted on penetrating the American delusion, was that the war meant the deaths of 8,500 American troops and civilians and at least 300,000 Iraqis as well.
We built on the terrorism lie – Saddam Hussein was no friend of the 9/11 terrorists – by arguing that he had weapons of mass destruction. The al-Qaida attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon also gave interventionists the opening to invade Iraq, as an extension of the war on terror. Osama bin Laden gave American interventionists eager for the next fight a huge justification – an attack on the U.S., which washed the Vietnam Syndrome away in a sea of righteous retribution against al-Qaida. Nik Wheeler/Corbis via Getty Images ‘A sea of righteous retribution’ In 1975, helicopters evacuated Americans and Vietnamese people from the U.S. was directly involved for 20 years, marched on.
effort to overthrow another government and I thought, “This is a bad idea my country should not be doing this.” And the war, in which the U.S. On that day, I was in a bus on a tour of the battlefields of Ypres, Belgium, led by a French history professor.Īs I watched the grave markers sweep by, I was reading a report in Le Monde exposing this U.S. I was a Fulbright Fellow, starting a long career in national security policymaking and teaching, studying in Europe.
embassy and intelligence agencies had been directly involved in planning a coup to depose the president of South Vietnam and his brother, leading to their executions. The pattern first became clear to me when I learned on Nov. This weakness-masquerading-as-strength has repeatedly led the country into failed foreign interventions. In Afghanistan, American hubris – the United States’ capacity for self-delusion and official lying – has struck once again, as it has repeatedly for the last 60 years.
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