In spring 2004, Gen Anthony Zinni uttered about Iraq the dreaded words in US politics: “I spent two years in Vietnam, and I’ve seen this movie before.” A year after George W Bush’s declaration of “mission accomplished” – when the war had hit its peak popularity at 74% – the invasion had descended into quagmire, marked by a raging insurgency, the Abu Ghraib torture scandal and US casualties nearing 1,000. For the first time, a majority of Americans judged the war a “mistake”. In this, they echoed what millions of Americans, predicting fiasco, had been saying since before its start.

By the summer of 2005, with Iraq exploding in civil war, public support further eroded. Vietnam comparisons abounded. Running against the war, Democrats had blowout wins in the 2006 midterms. The new Congress empaneled the bipartisan Iraq study group, which concluded that the war had to end. Its fate was sealed by the election of Barack Obama, who made good on his pledge to withdraw US troops (though US forces later returned to take on the Islamic State).

By 2019, 62% of American adults – and a staggering 58% of Iraq/Afghanistan veterans – judged the Iraq war “not worth fighting”. These numbers belie what feels like a deeper, bipartisan consensus that Iraq was a “stupid war”, never to be repeated. Something like an “Iraq syndrome”, similar to skittishness about major military interventions following Vietnam, had taken hold.

With the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, we may be witnessing the opening scenes of a dismal sequel, now to the movie called Iraq. Propelling Trump’s aggression is his gleeful defiance of traditional constraints to war-making, whether international treaties, global norms, congressional consent or the opinion of historic allies. Bush had his own unilateralism, wrapped in cowboy bluster. But his administration secured congressional approval for the Iraq war and at least tried, though failed, to win the same from the UN security council.

Trump rejects even a whiff of constraint. “I don’t need international law,” he boasts. He dares the world to stop or even slow him.

We desperately need an antiwar movement to at least try. At stake is whether we accept a new era of impunity – not, in the near term, of American power per se, but of a largely unpopular leader, claiming God-like omnipotence, to kidnap and kill, bully and bomb without limit.

Here the Iraq syndrome may offer........

© The Guardian