As the invasion of Iraq was about to commence, Colonel Tim Collins addressed his men of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment gathered on the Iraq-Kuwait border: “We go to liberate, not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Show respect for them... If you are ferocious in battle remember to be magnanimous in victory... Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham. Tread lightly there.”

But lightly the coalition forces did not tread on history. The Iraq adventure was never supposed to be a minor undertaking. It was meant to be the first step towards the transformation of the entire region as an answer to the Islamist radicalism being spawned by the authoritarian regimes of the Middle East. The neo-conservatives seemed to have succeeded where the liberals and the realists of yore had failed — in blending American values with American national interests. The Iraq war confounded most ideological categories and shattered a lot of myths about the use of force as liberals found it hard to oppose a war that would remove a genocidal regime from power. After all, it were the liberals who had been advocating a global interventionist agenda throughout the ’90s. The realists meanwhile found themselves isolated in a post-9/11 strategic environment where their argument for maintaining a balance of power as the best way to serve American national interests in the Middle East was fast losing currency.

... contd.