It’s the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war and, as one would expect, the usual suspects are busy wringing hands.
They say that asking why the Iraq war happened is an interesting historical question that nobody has properly answered. They say this is true for most wars, and even more so for this war, which today’s settled opinion holds never should have happened.
Let us forget how many people said precisely that at the time. Let us forget that wars do begin for a reason, and that the reason is usually not complex. Let us forget how easy it is to obscure guilt and culpability for supporting and selling unnecessary, criminal wars by throwing dust in the eyes of history.
Here’s an historical fact to remember: People start wars. Wars do not start by themselves. People may ‘sleepwalk’ into them by lying to themselves about how terrible they will be. But nobody starts a war in his sleep.
George W Bush started the Iraq war for a simple, obvious reason. He believed that it was his duty to finish the job his father failed to ‘finish’ in Iraq against the man who put a price on the head of said father. He believed, moreover, that it was his job to demonstrate the destructive will of his country, and his advisers convinced him that Iraq provided an easy and legitimate target for him to do that. That they were criminally wrong is not in dispute. But they did not start this war.
Bush did. And he succeeded on both counts.