4 - Hubris
The Superpower as Superhero
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
Summary
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
A “senior advisor” to President Bush, speaking with reporter Ron Suskind, 2002The civil war that slowly filled the vacuum left by Saddam’s regime horrified the Bush administration and other supporters of the war, and left them somewhat flabbergasted as well. The conquest had been as swift as expected, but the aftermath was not going as planned. By the time the 2007 surge of troops and change in strategy helped to reduce the sectarian violence to perhaps more tolerable levels, untold tens – perhaps hundreds – of thousands were dead, including more than four thousand Americans, and millions more had fled. The Iraqi economy was a wreck and de facto ethnic cleansing had divided the country.The United States had managed to do the impossible: it had actually made life in Iraq worse than it had been under Saddam Hussein.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Pathologies of PowerFear, Honor, Glory, and Hubris in U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 184 - 226Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013