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Neoconservative Dreams: the End of History, Utopias, and the American Invasion of Iraq in 2003

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Neoconservative Dreams: the End of History, Utopias, and the American Invasion of Iraq in 2003 1 Neoconservative Dreams: the End of History, Utopias, and the American Invasion of Iraq in 2003 This is an extended version of the talk given at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter, 18 May 2016, for the launch of my book, The New Age in the Modern West: Counter-Culture, Utopia and Prophecy from the late Eighteenth Century to the Present Day (London: Bloomsbury 2015). http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-new-age-in-the-modern-west-9781472522795/ Nicholas Campion Senior Lecturer, School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, [email protected] This talk is about the reasons for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, based on material from my new book, The New Age in the Modern West . My argument is that the neoconservatives who controlled US foreign policy after 9/11 were enthusiastically implementing a metaphysical and millenarian belief that history was bound to end in the triumph of American values. The well-known lack of planning for the aftermath was therefore not a matter of simple incompetence, but of deliberate calculation. To the neoconservative mindset, if success was inevitable there was no point in planning for the aftermath: the metaphysics of history would take care of it. The neoconservatives were born-again utopians, and like so many of their predecessors, their plans came tragically unstuck when faced with reality. The title is clear enough, I hope. My subtitle, Counterculture, Utopia and Prophecy , elaborates the theme. These are three words which we can tangle with. Counterculture is a word probably coined in 1969 to describe the 1960s’ youthful revolutions and hope that a better world was dawning. In this 500 th anniversary year of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia , utopianism is recognised as a general psychological condition in which people dream of a better future, even though in popular journalism it is often used dismissively. Prophecy? Well prophets tell us what that better future will be. All three words in my subtitle therefore deal with varieties of expectation about the future. First, a word from Herbert Marcuse, who wrote, ‘Utopia...refers to projects for change that are considered impossible’. 1 This is the problem with utopias. With the best will in the world they founder upon the realities of human nature and the inevitability of change. The attempt to create perfect societies is doomed by the laws of human behaviour and psychology, witness the grand failure of all varieties of religious, communist and socialist model communities created over the last century. As I said, my focus today is on material from the last chapter of my book, which discusses American neoconservatism and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. You might wonder what such material is doing in a book on New Age prophecy. My argument, simply stated, is that neoconservatism and New Age share certain fundamental characteristics, so much so that they can be considered part of the same family if ideas. I am going to outline the thesis I explore concerning the ideological reasons for the invasion. Everything I am saying is taken from material in the public record, and the broad structure of my argument is set out in an 1 Herbert Marcuse, Five Lectures: Psychafter oanalysis, Politics and Utopia (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), p. 63. 2 article in The Daily Telegraph by Sir Christopher Meyer, former British Ambassador to Washington. 2 I have filled in the gaps. It is fair enough to say that the invasion of Iraq was one of the great foreign policy blunders of modern times. To quote Christopher Meyer, ‘The failure to plan meticulously for Saddam’s aftermath led to almost a decade of violent chaos and the ultimate humiliation of British forces’.3 Five words in Meyer’s statement form the basis of my investigation: ‘The failure to plan meticulously’. My question is why was there such a failure? For the British government the Iraq invasion can be compared to the Suez adventure of 1956. We are now approaching the 60 th anniversary of that debacle, another disastrous military adventure which was justified by a fair amount of deception. Of the two, the human costs of the Iraq invasion have been immeasurably higher, and thirteen years later the country is still gripped by popular dissent, government corruption, sectarian rivalry bordering on civil war, and the horrors perpetrated by the so-called Islamic State. It was long ago recognised that prior to the invasion there was no planning for the aftermath. The year after the invasion an army post-mortem concluded that the common perception throughout the theater is that a roadmap for the rebuilding of Iraq does not exist. There is not a plan that outlines priorities with short, medium and long-term objectives. If such a plan exists within the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority], it has not been communicated adequately to Coalition forces.4 There was indeed no plan for what was known as Phase IV – the period of reconstruction – because, as Jay Garner, first Director of the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian assistance in Baghdad, asked, if the expectation was that there would be a democratic American-friendly government installed by June 2003, ‘why have a phase IV plan?’ Unfortunately for the Americans, a plan was precisely what the Iranians had. 5 Neither, by the way, should we imagine that the lack of a plan was a secret. Michael Ancram, the British shadow foreign secretary, had raised the problem in the House of Commons before the invasion. It is widely agreed that the chaos of the aftermath of the invasion can be blamed on the military’s lack of readiness. To this we might add what appears to be an almost total failure by the Foreign Office in London to pay any attention to local conditions in Iraqi society and politics. I say ‘appears to be an almost total failure’ because Meyer claims that Blair ignored ‘repeated warnings from the Foreign Office and the Washington embassy’. 6 For Meyer, the Foreign Office is absolved of blame. However, we may not know the nature of that Foreign Policy advice until the relevant papers are released, and under the thirty year rule this takes us to 2033. That said, Blair’s decision to ignore the best advice on local conditions in Iraq is one 2 Christopher Meyer, ‘Iraq War: Sir Christopher Meyer: 'I'm with you whatever', Tony Blair told George Bush’, The Daily Telegraph , 9 March 2013. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/9919816/Iraq-War-Sir-Christopher-Meyer-Im- with-you-whatever-Tony-Blair-told-George-Bush.html 3 Meyer, ‘Iraq War’. 4 Cited in Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (London: Penguin 2006), p. 103. See also p.212. 5 Cited in Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (London: Penguin 2006), p. 110; see also p. 122.. 6 Meyer, ‘Iraq War’ 3 I wish to explore. Meyer hinted at the reason – Blair’s adoption of an extreme neoconservative position. I will elaborate on this, Even Blair now concedes that to ignore local conditions was a reason for the post-invasion disaster. In 2015 he finally issued a qualified apology: ‘I also apologise for some of the mistakes in planning and, certainly, our mistake in our understanding of what would happen once you removed the regime’. 7 On 25 May 2016 he added a little more detail and was reported as having admitted that the West must learn the “lesson” that toppling dictators can lead to the rise of extremists…We underestimated profoundly the forces that were at work in the region and that would take advantage of the change once you topple the regime. That’s the lesson. The lesson is not actually complicated, the lesson is simple. It’s that when you remove a dictator out come these forces of destabilisation.8 Again, this begs the question, why did Blair ignore the advice that Meyer says was offered him? What world view did he subscribe to that allowed him to overrule Foreign Office advice? The question of Blair’s philosophy is usually overlooked. For example, Tom Bower, for all his detailed documentation of Blair’s alleged failings in his biography, Broken Vows , never asks why Blair behaved as he did and pays no attention whatsoever to his ideology. He only gives this hint of Blair’s historical determinism: Tony Blair, according to Tom Bower, paid no attention to military briefings because ‘His instinct…convinced him that… Iraqis would embrace liberal democracy once the ruling dictatorship had been destroyed’. 9 Most books on the Iraq invasion are purely descriptive. They are chronicles, and as such are clearly important and extremely useful as sources, but they are usually devoid of analysis. I am thinking particularly of fine books by John Le Anderson, Patrick Cockburn, Russ Feingold and Thomas Ricks. 10 I have relied heavily on Ricks, in particular. Even Robert Fisk’s magisterial study of the Middle East pays no attention to ideology. 11 That the American government was dominated by neoconservatives is usually ignored, which is curious. Would one really expect to understand, say, Lenin’s policies with no reference to his ideology. Or Mao’s? Or Roosevelt’s? Or any significant politician? Patrick Cockburn, for example, has written a brilliant account of the war but locates the radical nature of the US invasion solely in that fact that as the sole surviving superpower the US could do what it liked. Therefore it could turn what had been the greatest Arab power – until the first Gulf War – into a quasi-colonial state, seizing its oil reserves and altering the global balance of power, just because it could.12 But surely life is a little more complex than that? Cockburn allows only a passing reference to psychological motives for the invasion – 7 Nicholas Watt, ‘ Tony Blair makes qualified apology for Iraq war ahead of Chilcot report’, The Observer, 25 October 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/25/tony-blair-sorry-iraq-war-mistakes-admits- conflict-role-in-rise-of-isis 8 Steven Swinford, ‘I misread risks of Iraq war, admits Blair’, The Daily Telegraph , 25 May 2016, p.
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