The similarities between Iran in 2026 and Iraq in 2003 are obvious, and have been commented on before, most thoroughly by Frederick Deknatel in New Lines magazine. Like Trump, George W. Bush promised a quick, easy victory, only to plunge the U.S. into a conflict much more protracted and bloody than the one he’d advertised. Like Trump, he slaughtered untold numbers of civilians.
In both cases, this was a unilateral assault on a sovereign nation in the Middle East which had not attacked the United States, making it a clear-cut war of aggression. Aggression is the “supreme crime” in international law, and one of the primary crimes Nazi officers were hanged for at Nuremberg. The point of those trials, as chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson said at the time, was to establish for the world that actions like invading Poland would never be acceptable: “civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.”
And yet, more than 20 years after the fact, Bush and his associates have never faced any serious penalties for their invasion of Iraq, or for the litany of human rights abuses they committed in the process. Bush himself continues to be treated as a respectable figure in mainstream American politics, often compared favorably to the more vulgar and erratic Trump.
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And so, just a few decades later, Trump has walked through the door that Bush left wide-open, secure in the expectation that he, too, is unlikely to ever face real consequences.
It didn’t have to be that way. Over the course of the 2000s and 2010s, plenty of people made noble efforts to bring Bush to account for his crimes, and if they had been listened to and empowered, the world might be a very different place today.
This article is written from what would perhaps feel a bit too US centric of a perspective for this community normally but the analysis I think is globally relevant because of how large the consequences were. It is a relevant read for anybody unfortunately.
There’s all sorts of legislation like this, waiting in the wings. Corey Doctorow has actually talked about it as a useful tactic for consumer rights reform. The old saying is “never let a good crisis go to waste.” Whatever your cause, have draft legislation ready to go that supports your cause. Even better, brainstorm possible crises that your cause might appear a solution to. In a crisis, people are panicking. Politicians are looking a way to DO SOMETHING. Often simply doing a thing is more important than what thing you actually choose to do. For example. Let’s say you want to advance right-to-repair laws. Have that draft legislation ready to go, already drafted by lawyers in whatever jurisdiction you’re working in. Then wait for a crisis caused by vendor lock-in. Maybe a city water supply shuts down for obscure DRMd hardware reasons. Maybe John Deere goes bankrupt, and nearly every tractor in America gets bricked because of DRM issues. There are many possible scenarios where vendor lock-in via DRM could cause a real national or statewide emergency. So have your consumer rights legislation ready to go. When an appropriate crisis happens, the politicians will be looking to DO SOMETHING. And you’ll be there, bill in hand, ready to hand them the solution to their imminent problem. That would be a way to use a crisis for good.
I have no doubt that the Patriot Act was written long before 9/11. But I wouldn’t read anything conspiratorial into it. It was written by Republicans, who want to advance executive authority for their own reasons. (Mostly that they can push things via presidential power alone that they could never get passed through Congress.) Or if you want to start enforcing morality laws, a government with advanced surveillance powers sure is useful. Anyway, Republicans wanted the powers in the Patriot Act for their own reasons. They wrote it, put it in a drawer, and waited. And then they just waited til the next big terrorist attack or national security crisis. We’re a nation continually engaged in wars around the world. We’re going to get some blowback once in awhile. It’s an entirely predictable consequence of our foreign policy choices. So all they had to do was write it and wait. There’s no need to imagine 9/11 as anything other than the work of Bin Ladin and company. (Not sure if you meant to imply this conspiracy angle, sorry if not.)
No conspiracy, just looking for a spot to shoehorn in what they want, and they got a perfect moment when anyone arguing it would be shouted down as anti-patriotic. The name was well chosen.
It so much isn’t a tied together conspiracy like some claim, I had heard when Bin Laden found out the results of his plan, even he was surprised how impactful it was. He was looking to cause a disaster that would scare Americans, but he didn’t know it would work so well.