Jon Finer
186 μ£¥³¤ ¬μμ¬
Obama, whose rise was fueled by his
early opposition to the Iraq war, drew
new lessons from his predecessor’s
failures in Iraq. Obama’s understanding
o what had gone wrong encouraged
his wariness o wielding U.S. power,
especially in the Middle East; his com-
mitment to diplomacy as the tool o Ãrst
resort and openness to engaging even
the most dicult adversaries; and his
conviction that U.S. military action
should come only as part o the broadest
possible coalition and in accordance
with international law.
Those lessons guided Obama’s ap-
proach to the two most dicult problems
he faced during the last several years o
his term—the mounting Iranian nuclear
threat and the Syrian conÁict. On Iran,
Obama resisted the drumbeat o another
reckless war and instead made a deal
that removed an immediate nuclear threat
from the world’s most volatile region
without the United States having to Ãre a
shot. In Syria, Obama avoided a major
military escalation in favor o a varied ap-
proach, with elements o diplomacy,
humanitarian assistance, and force, which
ultimately failed to quell a devastating
conÁict. In each case, the Iraq war
weighed heavily in internal debates.A BIG, FAT MISTAKE
Although it would be hard to imagine a
presidential candidate more dierent
from the incumbent he sought to replace,
Trump also argued that the United
States should avoid Middle Eastern
“quagmires” and called the Iraq war “a
big, fat mistake.” As president-elect, he
told an audience at Fort Bragg oÊ his
commitment to “only engage in the use
o military force when it’s in the vital
national security interest o the Unitedour purposes are just and clear, we should
use it decisively.”
In the end, President George H. W.
Bush followed only hal o Haig’s
advice, evicting Saddam’s army from
Kuwait but stopping short o marching
on Baghdad. In his victory speech,
Bush boasted, “We’ve kicked the
Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”
WHICH IRAQ LESSON?
That cure cemented the United States’
status as the world’s sole superpower
but had some unforeseen side eects.
The country has now spent nearly three
decades engulfed in Iraq in various
ways. Iraq has provided the leading
historical analogies for foreign-policy
makers in the past four U.S. adminis-
trations and has informed their under-
standing o the extent and limits o
American power, even as other crises
have Áared and faded.
President Bill Clinton quietly contin-
ued the conÁict with Saddam after the
end o the 1990–91 GulÊ War by bombing
Iraqi targets throughout his tenure,
imposing unprecedented sanctions, and
shifting the United States’ ocial policy
to regime change. His secretary o state,
Madeleine Albright, coined the phrase
“the indispensable nation” to justify
further U.S. intervention in Iraq. A few
years later, to bolster the case for an inva-
sion, ocials serving President George
W. Bush used his father’s supposed
strategic error o not proceeding to
Baghdad, along with a healthy dash o
the Munich analogy. They also massively
exaggerated the threats posed by Sad-
dam’s weapons programs and the Iraqi
leader’s purported ties to terrorist groups.
Repulsed by that sales job and the
Ãasco it helped promote, President Barack