Iraq and Brexit: A Common Thread of Hubris

The 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, now regarded as one of the biggest foreign policy mistakes in American history, has brought back a flood of difficult memories from my own time working on the issues in the run-up to, and during, the invasion.  

In the late 1990s, I was for a while the desk officer for northern Iraq, helping to make the case for maintaining sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s regime and to implement the no fly zone operated by the US and UK to protect the largely Kurdish population living in that region, who had suffered for years under his brutal rule.

In September 2001, less than 24 hours after the 9/11 attacks in America, I was called up to work in the UK’s emergency response centre in Whitehall, codenamed COBRA. My job was to work through the night, in charge of a small team, monitoring global reactions and responses to the attacks and sifting reports from our embassies worldwide to produce a short situation report (SitRep) for Cabinet by 9am every morning.

A few weeks later, I flew to Washington to become the head of the press section at the British Embassy for the next six months, during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan to dislodge Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It was an intense and frightening time.

Though not directly linked to the invasion of Iraq, 9/11 played a critical role in increasing the US and UK’s perception of the threat and providing context for the war in Iraq. I remained in Washington for the next two years, as the drumbeats for war grew progressively louder…

Alexandra Hall Hall for the Byline Times.