Abstract
With these contemporary, contrasting histories setting the context for war in Iraq, this study returns to its initial question: Why did the United States go to war with Iraq in 1991 and 2003? By contrasting the domestic political context and the diplomatic history of each president, it concludes that George H. W. Bush went to war in 1991 against Saddam Hussein’s perceived capabilities to threaten the United States, while George W. Bush, on the other hand, went to war in 2003 against Saddam’ s perceived intentions.
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
—Mark Twain (Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World [Harper, 1899]. The quote is attributed to Pudd’nhead Wilson’Bush, seen as new calendar, and can be found at the beginning of chapter eleven)
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Notes
- 1.
Hans J. Morgenthau, “The Limits of Historical Justice,” Truth and Power: Essays of a Decade: 1960–70 (Praeger Publishers, 1970), p 73.
- 2.
See Joseph Siracusa, New Left Diplomatic Histories and Historians: The American Revisionists, (Updated Edition, Regina Books, 1993). Of course, historian Andrew Bacevich disagrees and argues for a revival of revisionist history in the twenty-first century, lamenting the “ornamental” function of contemporary history. See Andrew Bacevich, “The Revisionist Imperative: Rethinking Twentieth Century Wars,” The Journal of Military History, 76 (2012): 335.
- 3.
Gaddis went to great lengths to criticize the tendencies of scholars, in both diplomatic history and political science, to conveniently array history in order to present a set of answers. In particular, Gaddis warns against “reductionist” attempts to find “single cause” explanations for international affairs. See John Lewis Gaddis, “New Conceptual Approaches to the Study of American Foreign Relations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 14, Is. 3 (1990): 405–423; John Lewis Gaddis, “Expanding the Database: Historians, Political Scientists, and the Enrichment of Security Studies,” International Security, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1987): 3–21.
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Siracusa, J.M., Visser, L.J. (2020). Remembering America Going to War in Iraq. In: Going to War with Iraq. The Evolving American Presidency. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30163-7_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30163-7_6
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