A year of thwarted ambition

[Manix]

War in Iraq revealed the likely limits to American imperial power


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It is salutary to reflect on how the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent course of the occupation have tempered the ambitions and expectations of the Bush administration. We may now live in the era of American hyperpower and a new kind of American imperial ambition, but Iraq has served to demonstrate some of the likely limits to that power.

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Iraq has already demonstrated that American public opinion does not have the stomach for a prolonged occupation, that the Bush administration cannot afford the body bags, and that therefore their Iraqi appointees will have to assume, sooner rather than later, many of the frontline responsibilities. The occupation of Iraq has taught the US, not to mention the world, that overweening military power is not invincible, but on the contrary, is as vulnerable as ever when it tries to occupy another people's country. Such was, and remains, the lesson of anti-colonial struggle.

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None of this is to suggest that we do not live in the age of the American imperium. Following 9/11, we have witnessed the birth of a new American unilateralism and self-interest to which every country in the world has been, and is being, obliged to respond and relate. Iraq is the first true test of that American imperial ambition and it has already served to suggest some of the limits to that power.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1112882,00.html