The media has been littered over the past week with reports concerning the departure from Iraq of the last US combat troops. On the margins of that coverage, and to a greater extent in the think tank press, questions have been posed about the conduct of the war, its costs, what may have been achieved, whether or not it is really over, and what lies ahead.
More remarkable, however, is the speed and extent to which the Iraq war, like a bad dream the morning after, has faded from public consciousness.
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While doing the research for Guerrilla Diplomacy, I came across an especially poignant quotation attributed to the Roman senator and historian Tacitus. He wrote:
They created devastation, and called it peace.
Much the same could be said about Iraq in September 2010. By the time the shock and awe campaign began in the spring of 2003, it had become clear that in the USA, foreign policy had in large part become an instrument of war, rather than vice versa.