Fools Rush In: American Policy and the Iraq-Iran War, 1980–88

Abstract

Marshman’s devastating assessment of British policy in the First Afghan War seems, at first, an obscure starting point for a discussion of US policy toward the Iraq-Iran war. However, a careful examination of the history of that policy, particularly the turn it has taken since late 1986, suggests that Marshman’s assessment may yet be as painfully true of US policy as it was of Great Britain’s. Indeed, while explicably charting the oscillations of US policy may be taxing of social scientific theory, the implications of such a study for analysis of US decision-making and for the future interests of the United States in the Gulf region are deeply distressing. This chapter attempts, first, to summarise the history of this policy and, second to venture some preliminary generalisations from that history about the policy which may enable explanation and prediction of that policy’s future course and consequences. If it is neither pleasant nor comforting, it has, at least, the saving grace of being true.

… a war in which every principle of equity and justice was sacrificed to considerations of policy, and that policy so fatally false that its success served only to augment our danger.

John Clark Marshman on British policy in the First Afghan War