¹ Stieb, Joseph, “Why Did the United States Invade Iraq? The Debate at 20 Years,” Texas National Security Review, 6, 3 (Summer 2023), 11–28Google Scholar. Prominent works in this security school include Leffler, Melvyn, Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bozo, Frederic, A History of the Iraq Crisis: France, the United States, and Iraq, 1991–2003 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Debs, Alexandre and Monteiro, Nuno, “Known Unknowns: Power Shifts, Uncertainty, and War,” International Organization, 68, 1 (Winter 2014), 1–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Scholars in this school include Butt, Ahsan, “Why Did the United States Invade Iraq in 2003?”, Security Studies, 28, 2 (2019), 250–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Desch, Michael, “America's Liberal Illiberalism: The Ideological Origins of Overreaction in US Foreign Policy,” International Security, 32, 3 (Winter 2007–8), 7–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Porter, Patrick, “Iraq: A Liberal War after All,” International Politics, 55, 2 (March 2018), 334–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heinze, Eric, “The New Utopianism: Liberalism, American Foreign Policy, and War in Iraq,” Journal of International Politics Theory, 4, 1 (April 2008), 105–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Scholars in this school include McAlister, Melani: Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and US Interests in the Middle East since 1945, 2nd edn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Morefield, Jeanne, Empires without Imperialism: Anglo-American Decline and the Politics of Deflection (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kumar, Deepa, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire: Twenty Years after 9/11 (New York: Verso Books, 2021)Google Scholar; Krebs, Ronald, Narrative and the Making of US National Security (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Edward Said, “A Window on the World,” The Guardian, 1 Aug. 2003.

⁵ Klaus Brummer, “Toward a (More) Critical FPA,” Foreign Policy Analysis, 18, 1 (Jan. 2022), at https://doi.org/10/1093/fpa/orab031 (accessed 8 Dec. 2022).

⁶ McAlister, xi.

⁷ Edward Said, Orientalism, 3rd edn (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 42.

⁸ Kumar, 40; Mackay, Joseph, The Counterinsurgent's Imagination: A New Intellectual History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 120–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Pitts, Jennifer, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 1–11Google Scholar; Mehta, Uday, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ikenberry, G. John, A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crises of Global Order (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020), 185–235Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Pitts, 1–9; Mehta.

¹¹ Reeves, Richard, John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand (London: Atlantic Books, 2007), 339–40Google Scholar; Mehta, 1–2; Hevia, James, English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Fawcett, Edmund, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 202–6Google Scholar.

¹² On the “pedagogy of imperialism” see Hevia, 1–29.

¹³ Morefield, Empires without Imperialism, 3–4, 24–25; Elkins, Caroline, Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire (New York: Penguin, 2022)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945, 3rd edn (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Jacobs, Matthew: Imagining the Middle East (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Mearsheimer, John, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 3–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Porter, Patrick, The False Promise of Liberal Order (Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2020), 1–9Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Richard Maass, The Picky Eagle: How Democracy and Xenophobia Limited US Territorial Expansion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press); Love, Eric, Race over Empire: Racism and US Imperialism, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Said, Orientalism, 2–3. For a criticism of Said's definition of orientalism see Ahmad, Aijaz, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (New York: Verso, 1992), 179–86Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Said, Orientalism, 38–40; Brennan, Timothy, Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021), 180–83Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Said, Orientalism, 507; Lockman, Zachary, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 186–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, 2nd edn (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 3–5; Morefield, Jeanne, Unsettling the World: Edward Said and Political Theory (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2022), 139CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²¹ Ussama Makdisi, “After Said: The Limits and Possibilities of a Critical Scholarship of US–Arab Relations,” Diplomatic History, 38, 3 (June 2014), 657–894, 670–71; Andrew Rotter, “Saidism without Said: Orientalism and US Diplomatic History,” American Historical Review, 105, 4 (Oct. 2000), 1205–17, 1213–15.

²² Said, “A Window on the World.”

²³ Brian Whitaker, “Reclaiming Orientalism,” The Guardian, 19 June 2008, at www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jun/19/middleeast (accessed 11 Feb. 2024). See also Mubarak Altwaiji, “Neo-orientalism and the Neo-imperialism Thesis: Post-9/11 US and Arab World Relationship,” Arab Studies Quarterly, 36, 4 (Fall 2014), 313–23, 319; Debra Merskin, “The Construction of Arabs as Enemies: Post-September 11 Discourse of George W. Bush,” Mass Communication and Society, 7, 2 (Nov. 2004), 157–75, 157–58; Deepa Kumar, “Framing Islam: The Resurgence of Orientalism during the Bush II Era,” Journal of Communication Inquiry, 34, 3 (2010), 270.

²⁴ Edward Said, “Blind Imperial Arrogance,” Los Angeles Times, 20 July 2003.

²⁵ Edward Said, “Imperial Continuity: Palestine, Iraq, and US Policy,” youtube.com, May 8, 2003, lecture, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgteoJ1LihU (accessed 16 Aug. 2022); See also Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 95.

²⁶ Daalder, Ivo and Lindsay, James, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2005), 13–14Google Scholar.

²⁷ Robert Jervis, “Understanding the Bush Doctrine,” Political Science Quarterly, 118, 3 (Fall 2003), 365–88;

²⁸ Leffler, Confronting Saddam, 51–79.

²⁹ McAlister, Epic Encounters, xviii.

³⁰ Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, 2nd edn (New York: Vintage, 1994), 304.

³¹ William Safire, “The Phony War,” New York Times, 1 Oct. 1990, A21; A. M. Rosenthal, “What Saddam Knows,” New York Times, 15 Jan. 1993, A15.

³² Paul Wolfowitz, “Clinton's Bay of Pigs,” Wall Street Journal, 27 Sept. 1996, A18.

³³ R. James Woolsey, “The Iraq Connection,” Wall Street Journal, 18 Oct. 2001, A26.

³⁴ Richard Perle, “The US Must Strike at Saddam Hussein,” New York Times, 28 Dec. 2001, A19.

³⁵ Paul Wolfowitz, “Remarks by Paul Wolfowitz,” 16 Oct. 2002, Iraqwatch.org, at www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/Pentagon/dod-wolfowitz-101602.htm (accessed 3 May 2022).

³⁶ Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, US Policy toward Iraq 3 Years after the Gulf War, 103rd Cong., 2nd sess., 23 Feb. 1994, 19.

³⁷ Laurie Mylroie, Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War against America (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2000).

³⁸ Wolfowitz also encouraged Defense Department officials to read Mylroie's work. See Clarke, Richard, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), 232Google Scholar; memorandum, British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Christopher Meyer to David Manning, “Iraq and Afghanistan: Conversation with Wolfowitz,” 18 March 2002, Digital National Security Archive, Targeting Iraq Part 1, 1.

³⁹ John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “An Unnecessary War,” Foreign Policy, Jan.–Feb. 2002, 52–55.

⁴⁰ Chaim Kaufman, “Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas: The Selling of the Iraq War,” International Security, 29, 1 (Summer 2004), 5–48.

⁴¹ Ahsan Butt, “Why Did the United States Invade Iraq,” 271.

⁴² Memorandum, Douglas Feith to Donald Rumsfeld, “Strategic Planning Guidance for the Joint Staff,” 18 Sept. 2001, Digital National Security Archive, Targeting Iraq Part 1, 1.

⁴³ Said, Culture and Imperialism, 295.

⁴⁴ Raphael Patai, The Arab Mind, 4th edn (Tucson: Recovery Resources Press, 2014); Brian Whitaker, “It's Best Use Is as a Doorstop,” The Guardian, 19 June 2008.

⁴⁵ Lewis, Bernard, Notes on a Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historian (New York: Viking, 2012), 329–31Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Jeffrey Goldberg, “Breaking Ranks,” New Yorker, 31 Oct. 2005, 54.

⁴⁷ Bernard Lewis, “Targeted by a History of Hatred,” Washington Post, 10 Sept. 2002, A15.

⁴⁸ Bernard Lewis, “September 11 in Historical Perspective,” Speech at Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 20 Oct. 2001.

⁴⁹ Butt, 276.

⁵⁰ Gellman, Barton, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency (New York: Penguin, 2007), 231–32Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Draper, To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq (New York: Penguin, 2021), 188.

⁵² Reuel Marc Gerecht, “Crushing al Qaeda Is Only a Start,” Wall Street Journal, 19 Dec. 2001, A18.

⁵³ Reuel Marc Gerecht, “They Live to Die,” Wall Street Journal, 8 April 2002, A26. See also Norman Podhoretz, “How to Win World War IV,” Commentary, Feb. 2002, 20.

⁵⁴ Victor Davis Hanson, An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 and the War on Terrorism (New York: Anchor, 2002), 92, 154. See also Charles Krauthammer, “Victory Changes Everything,” Washington Post, 30 Nov. 2001, A41.

⁵⁵ Krebs, Narrative, 145–72; Iver B. Neumann, “National Security, Culture, and Identity,” in Myriam Dunn Cavelty and Victor Maeur, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Security Studies, 1st edn (New York: Routledge, 2009), 111–20.

⁵⁶ McAlister, Epic Encounters, xxiii. See also Said, Covering Islam, 163–5.

⁵⁷ Melani McAlister, “A Cultural History of War without End,” Journal of American History, 89, 2 (Sept. 2002), 439–55.

⁵⁸ Said, Covering Islam, 163; McAlister, Epic Encounters, 8.

⁵⁹ Shaheen, Jack, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Semmerling, Tim Jon, Evil Arabs in American Popular Film: Orientalist Fear (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Anne Norton, “Gender, Sexuality, and the Iraq of Our Imagination,” Middle East Report 173 (Nov.–Dec. 1991), at https://merip.org/1991/11/gender-sexuality-and-the-iraq-of-our-imagination (accessed 13 Feb. 2024); Purnima Bose, “The Canine-Rescue Narrative, Civilian Casualties, and the Long Gulf War,” in Jon Simons and John Louis Lucaites, eds., In/Visible War: The Culture of War in Twenty-First-Century America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017), 193–210.

⁶¹ Mohammed Samei, “Neo-orientalism? The Relationship between the West and Islam in Our Globalized World,” Third World Quarterly, 31, 7 (2010), 1145–60; Ali Behdad and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, “Neo-orientalism,” in Brian Edwards and Juliet Williams, eds., Globalizing American Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 283–89.

⁶² Edward Said, “The Essential Terrorist,” The Nation, 14 June 1986, 195.

⁶³ Clark McCauley and Jennifer Stellar, “US Muslims after 9/11: Poll Trends 2001–2007,” Perspectives on Terrorism, 3, 3 (Sept. 2009), 35–47; Costas Panagopoulos, “Arab and Muslim Americans and Islam in the Aftermath of 9/11,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 70, 4 (Winter 2006), 608–24.

⁶⁴ Panagopoulos, 613; Henry Weinstein, “Racial Profiling Gains Support as Search Tactic,” Los Angeles Times, 24 Sept. 2001.

⁶⁵ Panagopoulos, 612; US Department of Justice, Confronting Discrimination in the Post-9/11 Era: Challenges and Opportunities Ten Years Later, 2011, at www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2012/04/16/post911summit_report_2012-04.pdf (accessed 30 Oct. 2022), 4.

⁶⁶ Panagopulous, 609; US Department of Justice, 4.

⁶⁷ George W. Bush, “Transcript of President's Remarks on Iraq Resolution,” New York Times, 27 Sept. 2002, A18.

⁶⁸ “Bush's Speech on Iraq,” New York Times, 18 March 2003, A14.

⁶⁹ Editorial, “Iraq and Al Qaeda,” Wall Street Journal, 25 Oct. 2002, A10. See also Robert Kagan and William Kristol, “Getting Serious,” Weekly Standard, 19 Nov. 2001, 7; Fouad Ajami, “Two Faces, One Terror,” Wall Street Journal, 11 Nov. 2002, A12.

⁷⁰ George W. Bush, “Bush's Speech on Iraq,” New York Times, 18 March 2003, A15.

⁷¹ Briefing, US Department of Defense, “Assessing the Relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda,” 16 Sept. 2022, US Intelligence in the Middle East, 2.

⁷² US Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counter Terrorism, “Patterns of Global Terrorism: Middle East Overview,” 30 April 2000, at https://2009-2017.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2000/2438.htmApril (accessed 30 Oct. 2022); Navin Bapat, Daniel Ertley, Chansonette Hall, and Mark Lancaster, “Perfect Allies: The Case of Iraq and Al Qaeda,” International Studies Perspectives, 8, 3 (Aug. 2007), 272–86.

⁷³ Krebs, Narrative, 163.

⁷⁴ Carroll Doherty and Hannah Hartig, “Two Decades Later, the Enduring Legacy of 9/11,” 2 Sept. 2021, pewresearch.org, at www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/09/02/two-decades-later-the-enduring-legacy-of-9-11 (accessed 31 Oct. 2022).

⁷⁵ Krebs, 3.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 4–14. See also Bose, Purnima, Intervention Narratives: Afghanistan, the United States, and the Global War on Terror (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020), 2–3Google Scholar; Ravi, Narasimhan, “Looking beyond Flawed Journalism: How National Interests, Patriotism, and Cultural Values Shaped the Coverage of the Iraq War,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 10, 1 (2005), 45–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁷ Walt, Stephen, The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2018), 61–81Google Scholar; Porter, “Iraq: A Liberal War after All,” 340–46; Krebs, 145–72.

⁷⁸ Said, Orientalism, 1, 49; Meghana Nayak, “Orientalism and ‘Saving’ US State Identity after 9/11,” International Feminist Journal of Politics, 8, 1 (2006), 54–58.

⁷⁹ Gorski, Phillip, American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017)Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ McAlister, Epic Encounters, xi.

⁸¹ Morefield, Unsettling the World, 142.

⁸² Thomas Friedman, “Bush, Iraq, and Sister Souljah,” New York Times, 8 Dec. 2002, C15.

⁸³ David Frum, “The Truth,” AEI.org, 25 Oct. 2002, at www.aei.org/articles/the-truth (accessed 2 Nov. 2022).

⁸⁴ Michael Ledeen, “The War on Terror Won't End in Baghdad,” Wall Street Journal, 4 Sept. 2002, A22.

⁸⁵ Reuel Marc Gerecht, “The Restoration of American Awe,” Weekly Standard, 12 May 2003, 18.

⁸⁶ Thomas Friedman, “Thinking about Iraq,” New York Times, 8 Dec. 2002, A21. See also Fareed Zakaria, “Why Do They Hate Us?” Newsweek, 4 Oct. 2001, 22–28.

⁸⁷ Bob Woodward, State of Denial (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 83–84.

⁸⁸ Fouad Ajami, “Iraq and the Arabs’ Future,” Foreign Affairs, 82, 1 (Jan.–Feb. 2003), 2–18; Ajami, The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, The Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq (New York: Free Press, 2007).

⁸⁹ Rich Lowry, “End Iraq,” National Review, 15 Oct. 2001, 33; Max Boot, “The Case for American Empire,” Weekly Standard, 15 Oct. 2001, 27; Morefield, Empires without Imperialism, 7.

⁹⁰ Michael Ignatieff, “The American Empire: The Burden,” New York Times Magazine, 5 Jan. 2003.

⁹¹ Edward Said, “Orientalism,” Counterpunch.org, 5 Aug. 2003, at www.counterpunch.org/2003/08/05/orientalism (accessed 9 Aug. 2022).

⁹² Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” The Atlantic, Sept. 1990, 47–60; Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (New York: Random House, 2003), xxv–xxvii.

⁹³ Lewis, Crisis of Islam, 137–65.

⁹⁴ Said, Orientalism, xx.

⁹⁵ Morefield, Empires without Imperialism, 201.

⁹⁶ Pitts, Turn to Empire, 4–5; Morefield, Unsettling the World, 187–89.

⁹⁷ Gary Gerstle, “The Protean Character of American Liberalism,” American Historical Review, 99, 4 (Oct. 1994), 1043–73; Duncan Bell, “What Is Liberalism?”, Political Theory, 42, 6 (Dec. 2014), 682–715; Fawcett, Liberalism, 4.

⁹⁸ Andrew Fitzmaurice makes this critique of scholars like Uday Mehta and Michael Desch, who tend to essentialize liberalism as imperialist. See Andrew Fitzmaurice, “Liberalism and Empire in Nineteenth-Century International Law,” American History Review, 117, 1 (Feb. 2012), 122–40.

⁹⁹ Porter, “Liberal War,” 334–48; Nicholas Kitchen and Michael Cox, “Just Another Liberal War? Western Interventionism and the Iraq War,” in Amitav Acharya and Hiro Katsumata, eds., Beyond Iraq: The Future of World Order (London: World Scientific, 2011), 65–84.

¹⁰⁰ Jennifer Pitts, “Empire and Legal Universalisms in the Eighteenth Century,” American Historical Review, 1 (Feb. 2012), 92–121, 120. See also Desch, “Liberal Illiberalism,” 7–43.

¹⁰¹ McAlister, Epic Encounters, 267.

¹⁰² Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” National Interest, 16 (Summer 1989), 3–19, 4.

¹⁰³ Muravchik, Joshua, Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America's Destiny (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Ledeen, Michael, Freedom Betrayed: How America Led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War, and Walked Away (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ Mazower, Mark, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (New York: Penguin, 2012), 378–406Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Benjamin Miller, “Explaining Changes in US Grand Strategy: 9/11, the Rise of Offensive Liberalism, and the War in Iraq,” Security Studies, 19, 1 (2010), 26–65.

¹⁰⁶ Joseph Stieb, “The Vital Center Reborn: Redefining Liberalism between 9/11 and the Iraq War,” Modern American History, 4, 3 (2021), 285–304; Amy Kaplan, “Violent Belongings and the Question of Empire Today,” American Quarterly, 56, 1 (March 2004), 1–18.

¹⁰⁷ Anthony Lake, “From Containment to Enlargement,” speech, Washington, DC, 21 Sept. 1993.

¹⁰⁸ Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” in John Ehrenberg, Patrice McSherry, Jose Sanchez, and Caroleen Sayej, eds., The Iraq Papers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 81–84, 83.

¹⁰⁹ Cong. Rec., Senate, 102nd Cong., 1st sess., 27 Feb. 1991, 4403.

¹¹⁰ The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, Public Law 338, 105th Cong., 2nd sess., Congress.gov, 31 Oct. 1998, at www.at.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/h1998 (accessed 22 Sept. 2022).

¹¹¹ Lawrence Freedman, “Iraq, Liberal Wars, and Illiberal Containment,” Survival, 48, 4 (Winter 2006), 51–65.

¹¹² Stieb, Joseph, The Regime Change Consensus: Iraq in American Politics, 1991–2003 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 187–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹³ Rice and Bush. On this transformation see Traub, James, The Freedom Agenda: Why America Must Spread Democracy (Just Not the Way George Bush Did) (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008), 99–122Google Scholar.

¹¹⁴ Jeremy Moses, “Liberal Internationalist Discourse and the Use of Force: Blair, Bush, and Beyond,” International Politics, 47 (2010), 26–51; Desch, “Liberal Illiberalism,” 14–15; Heinze, “New Utopianism,” 116–17.

¹¹⁵ George W. Bush, “Full Text: George Bush's Speech to the American Enterprise Institute,” The Guardian, 27 Feb. 2003, at www.theguardian.com/world/2003/feb/27/usa.iraq2 (accessed 29 July 2024). On liberal ideas of democracy and world order see Michael Desch, “Benevolent Cant? Kant's Liberal Imperialism,” Review of Politics, 73, 3 (Fall 2011), 649–56; Kitchen and Cox, Western Interventionism,” 75–77.

¹¹⁶ National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), 334–35.

¹¹⁷ George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address,” 2002, in Andrew Bacevich, ed., Ideas and American Foreign Policy: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 444–47.

¹¹⁸ George W. Bush, “West Point Commencement Speech,” 2002, in Bacevich, 446–48, 446.

¹¹⁹ Condoleezza Rice, “Wriston Lecture,” American Presidency Project, 1 Oct. 2002, at www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index/php?pid=79793&st=iraq&st1 (accessed 23 July 2018).

¹²⁰ Bush, “State of the Union Address.”

¹²¹ Goldberg, “Breaking Ranks.”

¹²² Condoleezza Rice, “Principal's Committee Review of Iraq Policy Paper,” Rumsfeld Papers, 29 Oct. 2002, at https://papers.rumsfeld.com/library/default.asp?zoom_sort=0&zoom_query=Iraq+goals+objectives&zoom_per_page=10&zoom_and=0&Tag+Level+1=-1%7E0&Tag+Level+2=-1%7E0 (accessed 2 Nov. 2022).

¹²³ Preston, Andrew, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Knopf, 2012), 603–4Google Scholar.

¹²⁴ Sharansky, Natan, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 239–44Google Scholar.

¹²⁵ Stieb, Regime Change Consensus, 164.

¹²⁶ Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, What's Next in the War on Terrorism, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., 7 Feb. 2002, 20.

¹²⁷ George Packer, “America's Age of Empire,” Mother Jones, Jan.–Feb. 2003, 38. See also George Packer, ed., The Fight Is for Democracy: Winning the War of Ideas in America and the World (New York: HarperCollins, 2003); Thomas Cushman, ed., A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War with Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

¹²⁸ Kanan Makiya, “Help the Iraqis Take Their Country Back,” New York Times, 21 Nov. 2001, A19; Ahmed Chalabi, “Iraq for the Iraqis,” Wall Street Journal, 19 Feb. 2003, A14.

¹²⁹ Wolfowitz, “Remarks by Paul Wolfowitz.” For Rumsfeld on this point see Senate Armed Services Committee, US Policy on Iraq, 197th Cong., 2nd sess., 19 Sept. 2002, 32.

¹³⁰ Kaplan, Lawrence and Kristol, William, The War over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003), 23Google Scholar.

¹³¹ George W. Bush, “In the President's Words: ‘Free People Will Keep the Peace of the World’,” New York Times, 27 Feb. 2003, A16.

¹³² Rice, “Wriston Lecture.”

¹³³ Jentleson, Bruce, With Friends Like These: Reagan, Bush, and Saddam, 1982–1990 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994)Google Scholar; Gordon, Joy, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³⁴ Traub, Freedom Agenda, 123–52.

¹³⁵ Leffler, Confronting Saddam, xi–xviii; Butt, “Why Did the United States Invade Iraq,” 253; Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, “Realism, Liberalism, and the Iraq War,” Survival, 59, 4 (2017), 7–26.

¹³⁶ Kitchen and Cox, “Western Interventionism,” 66–71.

¹³⁷ MacDonald, Michael, Overreach: Delusions of Regime Change in Iraq (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

¹³⁸ Porter, “Liberal War,” 338–45; Moses, “Liberal Internationalist Discourse,” 26–51.

¹³⁹ Diamond, Larry, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2005)Google Scholar; Phillips, David, Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco (New York: Basic Books, 2006)Google Scholar.

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¹⁴¹ George W. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress,” Whitehouse.archives.gov, 20 Sept. 2001, at https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html (accessed 24 Oct. 2022).

¹⁴² Ibid.

¹⁴³ Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 97.

¹⁴⁴ Salim Yaqub, “Imperious Doctrines: US–Arab Relations from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush,” Diplomatic History, 26, 4 (Oct. 2002), 571–91, 572.

¹⁴⁵ Said, Orientalism, xx.

¹⁴⁶ Pitts, Turn to Empire; Ikenberry, A World Safe for Democracy, 218–40.

¹⁴⁷ Robert Frazier, “Kennan, ‘Universalism,’ and the Truman Doctrine,” Journal of Cold War Studies, 11, 2 (Spring 2009), 4–5.

¹⁴⁸ George Kennan, “America and the Russian Future,” in Kennan, American Diplomacy, 2nd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 135–6.

¹⁴⁹ Ibid., 138–54

¹⁵⁰ Maass, Picky Eagle, 12–42.

¹⁵¹ Richard Haass, “The Middle East in the Post-war Period: Political Stability and Operations,” paper, 8 Feb. 1991, OA/ID 01584-003, National Security Council, Richard Haass Files, Working Files, George Bush Presidential Library, 2.

¹⁵² Powell, Colin, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), 513Google Scholar.

¹⁵³ Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, US Policy in the Persian Gulf, 101st Cong., 2nd sess., 4 Dec. 1990, 84.

¹⁵⁴ Irving Kristol, “After the War, What?”, Wall Street Journal, 22 Feb. 1991, A21.

¹⁵⁵ George Will, “Stay Out of Carnage in Iraq,” Washington Post, 4 April 1991, A22; Will, “The Imperial Conservative,” Washington Post, 18 April 1991, A20.

¹⁵⁶ Adam Garfinkle, “The Impossible Imperative? Conjuring Arab Democracy,” National Interest, 69 (Fall 2002), 156–67.

¹⁵⁷ Fawaz Gerges, “Illusions of Iraqi Democracy,” Washington Post, 8 Oct. 2002, A20.

¹⁵⁸ Brent Scowcroft, “Don't Attack Saddam,” Wall Street Journal, 15 Aug. 2002, A12.

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¹⁶¹ Eric Margolis, “Iraq Invasion: The Road to Folly,” American Conservative, 7 Oct. 2002; Gary Rosen, The Right War? The Conservative Debate on Iraq (New York: Cambridge University Press), 2–5.

¹⁶² Patrick Basham, “Can Iraq Be Democratic?” cato.org, 5 Jan. 2004, at www.cato.org/policy-analysis/can-iraq/be/democracy-0 (accessed 1 Nov. 2022); Leon Hadar, “Pull the Plug on Iraq Fantasy,” Baltimore Sun, 6 Nov. 2003, A15.

¹⁶³ Dag Tuastad, “Neo-orientalism and the New Barbarism Thesis: Aspects of Symbolic Violence in the Middle East Conflict(s),” Third World Quarterly, 24, 4 (Aug. 2003), 591–3; Dabashi, Hamid, Post-orientalism: Knowledge and Power in a Time of Terror (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2009), 277Google Scholar; Morefield, Unsettling the World, 141; Edward Said, “An Unacceptable Helplessness,” counterpunch.org, 18 Jan. 2003, at www.counterpunch.org/2003/01/18/an-unacceptable-helplessness (accessed 5 Aug. 2022).

¹⁶⁴ McAlister, Epic Encounters, 287.

¹⁶⁵ Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, 2nd edn (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 211.

¹⁶⁶ Samuel Huntington, “The West: Unique, Not Universal,” Foreign Affairs, 75, 6 (Nov.–Dec. 1996), 30–35.

¹⁶⁷ “Samuel Huntington, Author and Political Scientist, Dies,” New York Times, 28 Dec. 2008, A10.

¹⁶⁸ Lewis, “Historical Perspective.”

¹⁶⁹ Ian Buruma, “Lost in Translation: The Two Minds of Bernard Lewis,” New Yorker, 14 June 2004.

¹⁷⁰ Lewis, Notes on a Century, 328, 342.

¹⁷¹ Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, “Open Letter to the President,” iraqwatch.org, 19 Feb. 1998, at www.iraqwatch.org/perspectives/rumsfeld/openletter.htm (accessed 13 March 2023).

¹⁷² Notes, National Security Council, Office of the National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, Box 342, folder: Future of Iraq [5], AEI Meeting Summary, “The Day After: Planning for a Post-Saddam Iraq,” 3 Oct. 2002, George W. Bush Presidential Library, 9. See also Lewis, Notes on a Century, 343–6.

¹⁷³ Bernard Lewis, “The Revolt of Islam,” New Yorker, 19 Nov. 2001.

¹⁷⁴ Lockman, Contending Visions, 251.

¹⁷⁵ Said, “Imperial Continuity.”

¹⁷⁶ Said, “Blind Imperial Arrogance.”

¹⁷⁷ Said, Orientalism, 2–7; Morefield, Unsettling the World, 149–51; Little, American Orientalism, 3.

¹⁷⁸ Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 43.

¹⁷⁹ McAlister, Epic Encounters, 304.

¹⁸⁰ Morefield, Unsettling the World, 176–77. For a representative text see Kagan, Robert, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World (New York: Knopf, 2018)Google Scholar.

¹⁸¹ On US denial of its imperial past see Immerwahr, Daniel, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2019)Google Scholar.

¹⁸² Said, “Blind Imperial Arrogance.”