Of Course They're Reusing The Iraq War Playbook. It Worked.

The political class didn't 'forget Iraq's lessons.'

As the Trump Administration brings the United States into war with Iran, many have noticed the striking similarities between the current propaganda and that leading up to the Iraq War. Despite the Director of National Intelligence recently testifying to Congress that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, the President insisted the Islamic Republic was ‘very close’ to a nuclear breakout.¹ As the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency said, there’s no proof Iran wants a nuclear weapon.

With Donald Trump’s claim that Iran is getting nukes as false as George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam Hussein had nukes, neoconservatives have dusted off the Iraq War Playbook to sell the war-weary public on yet another invasion of a Muslim-majority Middle Eastern nation.

Last week, Senator Rafael ‘Ted’ Cruz warned that evidence of Iranian nukes would be a ‘mushroom cloud over New York,’ a near verbatim recount of Condoleezza Rice’s infamous ‘We don't want the smoking gun [of Saddam’s nukes] to be a mushroom cloud.’ In many cases, it’s the exact same people. Benjamin Netanyahu, who is trying to pull America into the war he started, was Congress’s expert witness in 2002, where he urged for the U.S.-led invasion. (No Israeli soldiers fought in the Iraq War.) The list continues. Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, and countless other ghouls whose only driving purpose is to extract revenge on the Iranian people for daring to overthrow America’s puppet regime are back in the spotlight. Even the media is running it back, despite previous claims that they had ‘learned their lessons’ after Iraq and would meticulously scrutinize the government’s account going forward. (Though I think their coverage of Gaza burst that bubble long ago.)

In November 2002, Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote the Most Wrong Article in History, arguing regime change wouldn’t destabilize the Middle East. Apparently, Mr. Gerecht never heard about ISIS, as he’s currently writing the exact same argument about Iran. Never-Trump darling David Frum, George W. Bush’s speechwriter and the mind behind the bizarre ‘Axis of Evil’ speech, sold the 2003 war from behind the presidential seal. Now, he’s doing it under the masthead of The Atlantic.² It’s the same old dribble: false concerns about real human rights violations, a plea to ‘liberate women,’ and pinky promises that the perpetually intoxicated Secretary of Defense has all the details ironed out.

Left: 2002. Right: 2025

Upon hearing the screech of The Iraq Warband: The Reunion Tour, it’s natural to lambast the United States’ political and media establishment for repeating its past mistakes. I’ve seen many progressive, liberal, and centrist media figures position this as America ‘Failing to learn the lessons of Iraq,’ or ‘Forgetting the lessons learned.’ This understanding misses a crucial point we must consider if we want to curtail American imperialism. Incompetence is not why we’re hearing the same exact lies from the same exact liars. The neoconservatives, imperialists, and media propagandists aren’t repeating their mistakes; they’re repeating their greatest success.

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While we see the Iraq War as a tragedy, people like Bill Kristol, David Frum, and Donald Trump do not. Conscientious observers weep for the 37,000 American casualties, $728 billion wasted,³ the destabilization of the Middle East, the rise of ISIS, and over 200,000 civilian deaths (that’s the most conservative estimate)⁴ caused by the invasion. To most, the Iraq War is a harrowing tale about the dangers of warmongering leaders who, when abetted by unprincipled media systems, can weaponize national grief towards cataclysmic ends. But those cheerleading the bombing of Iran don’t see this. To them, the death and destruction Iraq brought is the cost of doing business, which they are happy to pay again. And why wouldn’t they? To them, everything worked perfectly.

The goal of invading Iraq was not to disarm Saddam Hussein. He never had a nuclear weapons program, and the only thing coming close to a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ was the weapons America gave him in the 1980s to fight… Iran. While control of Iraqi oil was certainly a factor, it was not the factor. Today, America imports less than a third of the Iraqi oil we did before the invasion.⁵ The true motivation for invading Iraq was admitted in May of 2003 by one of the war’s biggest cheerleaders, Thomas Friedman.

‘We needed to go over there [The Middle East] and take out a very big stick right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble. What they [Muslims] needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad and basically saying "Which part of this sentence don't you understand? You don't think we care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy, we're just going to let it grow? Well, suck on this!" That, Charlie, is what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia! It was part of that bubble. We could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.

It is no exaggeration to say the purpose of the Iraq War was to show Middle Eastern Muslims that the United States was still in charge. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, America’s political class, specifically the more belligerent branches, thought they’d conquered history. September 11th shook that belief, and many in power felt a need to reaffirm that the United States of America’s capitalist, White Jesus-praising way of life was the pinnacle of human civilization, defined by the ability to kill the most people in the quickest amount of time. Days after 9/11, Bush called the coming response a ‘crusade.’⁶ And crusade they did. After a decade of wanton destruction, the American warlords had reaffirmed that the United States could, and would, kill far more of the ‘others’ than they would ever kill of us. Sure, the Republican Party paid a temporary political price. But now they’re back in charge and getting everything they ever wanted. Why wouldn’t they reuse the tactics that worked exceptionally well for them? While many like myself see the Global War on Terror as an indictment of America’s moral failure, that is now how our many of our leaders see it.

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Not only did the Bush Administration succeed in getting their war, but they got away unscathed. None of the Iraq War perpetrators were brought to justice. They even escaped social stigma. Condoleezza Rice is a co-owner of the Denver Broncos. Dick Cheney was a surrogate for Kamala Harris’ presidential bid.⁷ George W. Bush has resumed his pre-9/11 brand as the goofy yet lovable commander in chief. In 2022, the former president slipped up and criticized Vladimir Putin’s ‘one-man invasion of Iraq.’ He quickly corrected himself, and the crowd laughed. This man is responsible for the indirect deaths of up to 4.7 million people.⁸ And they — fucking — laughed.

Even the media escaped repercussions. Brett Stephens is still a prestigious columnist. He wrote a defense of his war support for the 20th anniversary of the invasion, arguing that, oddly enough, the war deterred Iran’s nuclear program.⁹ His article mentions ‘ISIS’ once, only claiming the invasion positioned American troops to fight the Islamic State, never addressing that the invasion created it. Judith Miller was forced to resign for publishing fabricated intelligence unscrutinized, but in 2015, she was given a prestigious book deal by Simon & Schuester. The New York Times, which was effectively Dick Cheney’s "Saddam Has Nukes” Pinterest board, currently has over 11.4 million subscribers, while Knight Ridder, a small outlet that refuted the government’s lies was broken up and sold in 2006. So of course the media would fall right back into parroting Trump’s deranged lies about Iran. Sex sells, but not as much as war.

It is not enough to scold these people, or implore them to ‘remember Iraq.’ They remember it better than we do, which is why reusing the Iraq War Playbook was their first instinct. It gave them everything they wanted and nothing they didn’t. If we want to stop the unchecked war mongering of the United States government, then we need to start holding those responsible to account. President Obama declined to prosecute Bush or his officials for their War on Terror crimes for fear of setting a bad precdent.¹⁰ But that’s exactly what he did. By refusing to bring powerful criminals to justice, Obama reinforced the upper-class precedent of never, under any circumstances, saying another member of the political-media establishment should go to jail. To break this cycle and end the pointless death like that currently inflicted upon Iranians, those with power must be held to the same standard the rest of us.

Currently, Trump says the bombings are done, but Israel doesn’t seem to agree.¹¹ Whether or not this war is over, this is not the last time we’ll hear the Iraq War Playbook. To make matters worse, the war hungry political class now has two examples of it working perfectly and them getting away scot-free.

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In Solidarity — Joe

1. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/americas-spies-say-iran-wasnt-building-a-nuclear-weapon-trump-dismisses-that-assessment

2. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/right-move-wrong-team/683283/

3. https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/iraq-war-numbers-rcna75762

4. https://www.iraqbodycount.org/

5. https://www.statista.com/statistics/191210/petroleum-imports-into-the-us-from-iraq-since-2000/

6. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html

7. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/dick-cheney-kamala-harris-liz-cheney-rcna169979

8. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians

9. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/21/opinion/20-years-on-i-dont-regret-supporting-the-iraq-war.html

10. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aide-obama-wont-prosecute-bush-officials/

11. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-expects-israel-iran-ceasefire-last-forever-rcna214660