In my current work, I point to the invasion of Iraq 2003 as a moment where the public's trust in the foundational ideals of democracy, verification, deliberation, and accountability were systematically betrayed, destroying their trust in democratic systems. - ThreadSky

eliothiggins.bsky.social • 3 days ago

In my current work, I point to the invasion of Iraq 2003 as a moment where the public's trust in the foundational ideals of democracy, verification, deliberation, and accountability were systematically betrayed, destroying their trust in democratic systems.

Reposted from Eliot Higgins

Its nice the kids get to experience their own 2003 style build-up to an unjust war like we did.

Comments

stevemetz.bsky.social•3 days ago

But public support for the intervention was relatively high throughout. Plus there is a myth that the Bush administration lied about the threat. It didn't overtly but carefully packaged its statements so that they public would draw the erroneous conclusion that the administration wanted.

stevemetz.bsky.social•3 days ago

A hyper competitive information ecosystem providing growing space for the idea that the problem wasn't simply that their guys were in office instead of hours, but that the system itself is deeply flawed.

stevemetz.bsky.social•3 days ago

Ironically this idea emerged on the left but in a hyper competitive information ecosystem was adopted by the right in a faux populism which adopted blue anti authority attitudes and culture wars without actually advancing their tangible interests.

stevemetz.bsky.social•3 days ago

It is no longer the economy stupid but the culture war stupid. And this is because the information ecosystem can affect the culture war more than the economy.

stevemetz.bsky.social•3 days ago

And I believe the crisis of democracy has little to do with elected officials behaving differently than in the past than with changes in the information ecosystem. The Bush administration didn't do anything the Johnson and Nixon administrations didn't.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Public opinion is formed by the information they receive from gatekeeping institutions, for example:

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

The media in the 20th century played the role of the primary verifier of information, and the public saw them fail in that role in a very apparent way.

markgreenmantle.bsky.social•3 days ago

Major media players like Murdoch had business ties to former heads of the CIA, with those took advantage of the changes in power along several pathways, media access, political clout, and investments in gas fields in places that should have been out of bounds. News wasn't the singular motive.

dburbach.bsky.social•3 days ago

The public didn't really blame the media for cheerleading the war though -- confidence in the media remained *high* among Democrats/liberals, while among conservatives it plummeted, but the data seems more consistent with GOP respondents believing the media was falsely portraying the war a failure

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

If public and political deliberation is informed by flawed information, then trust in the process of deliberation is also lost. Then we saw no real accountability for what happened, which further damaged public trust in the systems that were meant to uphold foundational democratic principles.

ballaug.bsky.social•3 days ago

Amen.

stevemetz.bsky.social•3 days ago

But the rub is that most of the sources of information are for profit. I don't think it's realistic to expect them to act against their economic interests.

kasemenova.bsky.social•3 days ago

It seems possible that Americans would’ve metabolized the Iraq institutional failures had it not been followed by 2008 financial crisis. Not enough attention is paid to how that one-two punch, neither with real accountability, hollowed out the sense that US govt knew—or cared!—what it was doing.

schizodelusion.bsky.social•3 days ago

Flawed information goes back thousands of years. There was no real accountability for the Vietnam War either, it seemed to prove that the USA can do whatever it wants in the name of antisocialism. If accountability was real both parties would have collapsed and a new party would take power.

burrowcrat.bsky.social•3 days ago

“Nothing matters” became a real feeling after watching war criminals and torturers face no accountability whatsoever. And then the media and the political class adopted a “let’s look forwards, no backwards” position. The whole system was complicit in the Iraq disaster.

peachycheryl.bsky.social•3 days ago

Public support juiced by a compliant media within 🇺🇸 may have been high, but Canada saw through the intelligence “packaging” and refused to support 🇺🇸 in the Iraq debacle.🇨🇦
Lesson for 🇺🇸 citizens might be to question the lie of their exceptionalism and look outside their borders to find truth.

mikeyrockslang.bsky.social•3 days ago

That’s weird because I remember Colin Powell admitting he lied about yellow cake uranium. But as a solider, do you understand that in 2005 the DOD stopped allowing us to wear civilian clothes while off duty at war, do yo anti war slogans on tshirts?

I gotta talk about this stuff more…

stevemetz.bsky.social•3 days ago

The yellow cake uranium claim was a very minor part of the larger argument that Iraq had not dismantled its nuclear program as required by UN resolutions.

stevemetz.bsky.social•3 days ago

We know now that he believed the US knew the program was dormant but he didn't want it publicly known to deter Iran.

mikeyrockslang.bsky.social•3 days ago

Which we didn’t do because the day we invaded Iraq, the Iranians poured over the boarder too.

What’s not talk about enough is the missteps the GWB admin made when it came to the Iraqi military & police and then we spent a ton of capital attempting to rebuild both.

mikeyrockslang.bsky.social•3 days ago

I spent over 500 days in Iraq, you cannot convince me anything positive came out of it. By 2014 I believe it was reported that 100b dollars was stolen by defense contractors for work that was never completed or attempted.

There were no serious congressional hearings or any company held accountable

josephinejellybean.bsky.social•3 days ago

They carefully packaged their lies in just enough qualifying language to avoid a definite specification of truth that would have been provably false, you mean.

stevemetz.bsky.social•3 days ago

That's not exactly what I'm saying. The foundation of the Bush argument was that in the absence of definitive proof that Hussein had dismantled his WMD program it was prudent to assume that he had not.

stevemetz.bsky.social•3 days ago

The administration believed that post 9/11 there was a closing window of opportunity to assure that he had.

stevemetz.bsky.social•3 days ago

That was a flawed argument but again I think it's important to understand it rather than simply assert there was no logic behind the policy and it was pure perfidy.

stevemetz.bsky.social•3 days ago

The great flaw was the downplaying of the costs and risks of addressing the problem.

crankycoder.bsky.social•3 days ago

I feel like it was a combination of ignorance, political pressure, group think, and hubris. Probably not intentional lies but regardless the outcome was deeply tragic (I say this as someone who’s struggled to stop asking “why” questions about tragedies small and large)

josephinejellybean.bsky.social•3 days ago

Some of them were motivated enough to lie to themselves first, I suppose. But in the absence of definitive proof they were all dumb and scared as opposed to arrogant and self-serving, I'll continue to call their fundamental dishonesty just that.

shablopligh.bsky.social•3 days ago

935 false statements re Iraq WMD & terror links, on over 500 occasions, by Cheney Bush Rice Rumsfeld Wolfowitz Powell etc https://publicintegrity.org/politics/search-the-935-iraq-war-false-statements/

It was a concerted campaign of deceit to do global war, which corp establishment Democrats and Republicans were too happy to exploit.

darkcloud.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes, they “only” misled 🙄

Trump showed them the way — Lie Harder

stevemetz.bsky.social•3 days ago

I'm not justifying what the Bush administration did but I do believe that it's important to portray it accurately. There is a fundamental difference between the the Bush and Trump administrations.

darkcloud.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes, and I think I captured that difference accurately and succinctly.

aohriver.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes. That was when my husband left the Republicans and re-registered as a non-affiliated voter. We were lied to (he was; I distrusted the 'evidence' already, because of Vietnam).

abw56.bsky.social•3 days ago

The travesty of the Iraq War travesty, followed immediately by the Global Financial Crisis, feels like a one-two punch that demolished trust in both institutional political and economics - opening the doors to where we are today.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes, thats very much the argument I'm making in my work, faith on democracy was destroyed by the failures of democracy to deliver on its promise, and those events were a very public demonstration of those failures.

r0bertpau1s0n.bsky.social•3 days ago

New book on the way? 👀

rudell.bsky.social•3 days ago

I guess those failures, that erosion of faith, lowered the bar for the next war threat/financial bubble.

Once the country has experienced Iraq and credit default swaps with no institutional consequences, Iran and crypto aren’t so implausible.
https://bsky.app/profile/rudell.bsky.social/post/3lry65ms6us2u

petervieth.bsky.social•3 days ago

I was raised with right wing media but remember watching Colin Powell while at university and shock and awe, and the spell was broken. MSM whored itself, lining up to embed journalists and show explosions. Others around me swung to left media, but I kept noticing suspicious sources like RT.

stevemccluskey.bsky.social•3 days ago

I’m of an age where I can point to Vietnam — the Tonkin Gulf incident, the MyLai massacre, the Pentagon Papers, etc. — as eroding public trust.

r0bertpau1s0n.bsky.social•3 days ago

💯

jmhajek.bsky.social•3 days ago

I mean. 1990 wasn't any different, was it?

mbulskov.bsky.social•2 days ago

Well Iraq DID attack and occupy Kuwait. Still oil politics, but they were the aggressor and a broad coalition kicked them out.
Iraq in 2003 was a full blonde lie and did not have a broad coalition suporting it.

jmhajek.bsky.social•2 days ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

juanrive.bsky.social•3 days ago

Correct

dburbach.bsky.social•3 days ago

2003-2009 does see a persistent step downward in confidence in institutions, particularly political institutions, but nothing like the collapse from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s.

dburbach.bsky.social•3 days ago

What's also strange about the Iraq period is the decline in trust is higher among conservatives than liberals. Confidence in the news media among Democrats doesn't go down much, while it collapses among Republicans after 2003 even though their support for continuing the Iraq War remains strong

cherylrofer.bsky.social•3 days ago

Fox. News.

mdfranz.com•3 days ago

This jives with my personal experience after “not opposing the war” in 03 and voting for W in 2004 but Democrats after that (given how badly it was botched and Palin) instead of falling in with the Q crowd.

amb-markab.bsky.social•3 days ago

Bush era was when Rush Limbaugh style demonization of “the liberal media” became government policy.

Republicans stuck to Fox News after (some of) the rest of the media started reporting on the war as it existed in reality. The seeds of future “fake news” attacks were sown.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

I'd argue that at least in the 60s and 70s, the conditions for successful counterpublics existed, while by the 2000s, a lot of what made that possible had been hollowed out.

aohriver.bsky.social•3 days ago

Counter-culture, perhaps. And newspapers were braver. I dont know. Civil rights, though, made great progress.

poemproducer.bsky.social•3 days ago

who was in power then?

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Bush-Blair

poemproducer.bsky.social•3 days ago

I know, wasn't a question really, same team as nowwwwww

smedleybutlerghost.bsky.social•3 days ago

Made possible by previous 150 years of executive power grabbing and securing of the congressional seats through gerrymandering. I'll throw in the now unlimited $$$ in politics as the straw that finally broke the camels back. Trump won't be the last demagogue, its just the beginning.

debsypud.bsky.social•3 days ago

On polling day Dec 2019, the day the UK laughingly voted in Boris Johnson & his🐰oven-ready deal🐰I knocked doors for the Labour vote. One bloke was still going on about the Labour betrayal of the SEVENTIES (whatever that was).

nickinmasham.bsky.social•3 days ago

It was the miners’ strike for me

lucatrenta.bsky.social•3 days ago

While the impact of the 2003 war was huge, I wonder whether there has been a similar shock - leading to mistrust in democracy and institutions - at various moments at least since the 1960s. Watergate and Vietnam, Iran-Contra...

markstout.bsky.social•3 days ago

I’m inclined to say that Vietnam, at least, was more corrosive. That said, all of these four candidates were different in multiple dimensions in ways that probably mattered in terms of their impact on public trust. Would probably be an interesting paper (book?) making those comparisons.

lifeisamazing.bsky.social•3 days ago

This is absolutely my experience. When Cameron wanted to protect civilians in Syria, I no longer believed that information that they were being gassed with barrel bombs were true, because of the lies about Iraq. Nothing could be trusted any more. I'm sure others who had influence felt the same.

quietfictions.bsky.social•3 days ago

It’s awful that the administration thrives in an environment of low trust and low accountability, and that the only real solutions are the institutions they’re openly dismantling. It’s a feedback loop with no real acceptable brake.

timbophoto.bsky.social•3 days ago

Couldn’t have be done without the dumbing down of Amerka.
Power to the The People.

the-ill.bsky.social•3 days ago

For a lot of us it was Bush v. Gore. What followed the disruption of our democracy and the politicization of our Supreme Court was an inevitable series of dominoes that led to today.

the-ill.bsky.social•3 days ago

You could argue it really started with Contract with America in ‘94, and it did, but that was within the rules. Our core institutions weren’t actually broken until Bush v. Gore.

the-ill.bsky.social•3 days ago

Once you could steal an election and have the Supreme Court go along, you could do anything. The rules were gone. The logical next move was to go after Iraq’s oil fields, which was Cheney’s goal and why he made himself VP.

the-ill.bsky.social•3 days ago

People think it was 9/11. The reason for going into Iraq was always the oil, and the pretext was always WMDs. 9/11 was a distraction from that plan, but not enough to derail it.

borisnorris.bsky.social•3 days ago

Planning for war is the easy bit. Planning for peace is more difficult.
And was totally absent in Iraq.

xeynon.bsky.social•3 days ago

Iraq was definitely part of it but it's one of many such elite institutional failures in recent years (the GFC being another).

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yeah, Obama was the last gasp of hope that the system could still work after the betrayal of Iraq but the financial crisis showed accountability still didn't really impact the people it should, further destroying the public's faith in institutions at a fundamental level.

shablopligh.bsky.social•3 days ago

935 false statements about Iraq WMD and links to terror, by 7 Cheney Bush administration principals, on hundreds of occasions. https://publicintegrity.org/politics/search-the-935-iraq-war-false-statements/

Majorities doubt the Bush-appointed conflicted 9/11 Commission https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_conspiracy_theories

ceramicscientist.bsky.social•3 days ago

For a good number of people who are old enough I think Vietnam had already started the process. Unfortunately events like Vietnam weren't really discussed in history classes growing up when I feel like they should be. Sometimes I feel like history should be taught backwards in time.

politicsprof.bsky.social•3 days ago

A long string of big, important elite “calls” turned out to be mistaken (generously) or deceptive (less generously) that eroded public trust. Saddam has WMD; globalization will be good for you; response to 2008 financial crisis; COVID response (no way it came from a lab); in US, Biden is fine.

xeynon.bsky.social•3 days ago

Globalization is good for people, on balance. Nobody in a moribund factory town in the Midwest is affording a smartphone to post on the internet about how their factory town is moribund without it. Meanwhile the much larger role of automation in the loss of these industries is mostly ignored.

mjf2.bsky.social•3 days ago

Perhaps your paper addresses this, but groundwork for 2003 break was laid in late 60s Pentagon Papers/Vietnam; early 70s Watergate; and mid 70s Church Report in CIA abuse.

sto-k.bsky.social•3 days ago

In the US wouldn’t it be Vietnam and the subsequent rise of Fox News?

photodave219.fightins.online•3 days ago

The rise of Fox News essentially killed the fourth estate.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

I'd say the main difference is at least in the post-WW2 period you could still have successful counterpublics form and influence public opinion enough to trigger systematic changes. By 2003 so much of what made that possible was hollowed out opposition could be easily ignored.

hfmatters.bsky.social•3 days ago

It was certainly a significant moment, crystallized by Robin Cook's resignation...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2859431.stm

geist01.bsky.social•3 days ago

I feel like the seeds were really sewn around emergence of fox news, and the weakening of factuality requirements for cable and television media. Iraq or the activation of the reformed media machine around then may well be an inflection point.

pharnolds.bsky.social•3 days ago

The internet giants not being forced to take up the legally described task of editor? The old laws, full of foolproof measures (e.g. in banking or in antitrust) were nudged into the margin.

niceguyadi.bsky.social•3 days ago

The misleading of the public over Iraq was just as serious as over the Suez crisis. So why did it recover after Suez but not after Iraq?

Is it simply that no one was actually held accountable?

grimmilestone.bsky.social•3 days ago

Fox News didn't come online until 1996.

themodhostess.bsky.social•3 days ago

The Supreme Court decided the presidential election in 2000.

eliothiggins.bsky.social•3 days ago

That plus the financial crisis that followed yet again reminding people that accountability wasn't for the powerful.

abraxis.bsky.social•3 days ago

A recurring issue since at least 1865.

majpr.bsky.social•3 days ago

Supporting this horrific mess created by Netanyahu and Trump will be Starmer’s downfall. Apart from PIP domestic policy was shaping up nicely. Disaster that he’s sacrificing reputation and domestic progress to support illegal
Warfare initiated by self interested, irresponsible men.

zbrownjulius.bsky.social•3 days ago

I felt at the time that one of the media's main failings wasn't just the acceptance of trumped up WMD evidence, it was the blind acceptance of the argument that if Iraq had WMDs, it was a threat to the US and we needed to invade, which I thought was clearly false.

nigelstead.bsky.social•3 days ago

To an extent Germany after 1918.

zathras5.bsky.social•3 days ago

This is well put. The invasion of Iraq was *a* moment, less significant by itself than as a point in a continuum of decline.

And there are parallels between declining public confidence in the American government and the decline in confidence among foreign governments in our own.

retiredwhitelady.bsky.social•3 days ago

Let's not forget that within that time frame, the Bush administration had resisted investigating the events of 9/11, only relenting because of bad PR from the Jersey Girls. Imagine - biggest disaster on US soil, but no investigation. Then they floated Henry Kissinger to lead it...as if. As it was

retiredwhitelady.bsky.social•3 days ago

one of Condi Rice's mentees was assigned to do the clean up work, and to come up with all the conclusions needed to pass the Patriot Act. So not sure if vying for the stupidest timeline or the most sinister. I vote sinister.

andyb27457.bsky.social•2 days ago

Not the miners' strikes? The closure of the ship yards? Suez?

piotrsz.bsky.social•3 days ago

That was inflection point. But foundations for loss of trust have been laid down in the 70's and 80's. The Iraq war only sped up what was already a default trajectory.

shuffleosint.bsky.social•3 days ago

The idea of the US being an imperialist power spread through society as a reaction to that though in a way it likely wouldn't have otherwise.

Combine that with the collapse of the economic system in 2008 and multiple major pillars of democracy are undermined in one election cycle.

shuffleosint.bsky.social•3 days ago

Prior to that the US was riding a high of trust and popularity in the military following Desert Storm and the opening years of Enduring Freedom.

Iraq knocked that on the head for good.

edwinheathcote.bsky.social•3 days ago

Spot on.

roryr6.bsky.social•3 days ago

Bush did steal the election from Gore

roygrubb.bsky.social•3 days ago

I’d say it was the Supreme Court that did that.

roryr6.bsky.social•3 days ago

For republicans

nisse48.bsky.social•3 days ago

👍

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply