De fa\u00e7on assez curieuse et caract\u00e9ristique de notre situation, la question de la cause de la guerre en Irak semble toujours pos\u00e9e et ouverte, elle semble appara\u00eetre comme un myst\u00e8re persistant, une pol\u00e9mique incompl\u00e8tement conduite \u00e0 son terme. Les arguments continuent \u00e0 s’\u00e9changer (p\u00e9trole, rancur contre Saddam, certains croient m\u00eame encore aux fictions des arguments officiels : Saddam \u00e9tait une menace, il avait des liens avec les terroristes). Pourtant, cette cause, car il y en a une, et elle est centrale, principale m\u00eame si d’autres arguments se rajoutent, de toutes les fa\u00e7ons fondamentale, cette cause est connue et elle \u00e9tait nettement exprim\u00e9e dans l’ann\u00e9e, dans les mois qui pr\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e8rent le conflit, apr\u00e8s l’attaque du 11 septembre 2001.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tUn livre r\u00e9cent le rappelle et l’explique : Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq<\/em>, de Michael Gordon (journaliste au New York Times<\/em>) et Bernard Trainor (ancien lieutenant g\u00e9n\u00e9ral du Marine Corps). (Les deux hommes sont d\u00e9j\u00e0 les auteurs de General’s War<\/em>, livre sur la premi\u00e8re guerre du Golfe). Dans The London Review of Books<\/em> du 8 juin<\/a>, notre ami Andrew Bacevitch fait une critique du livre sous le titre \u00e9vocateur de \u00ab Why read Clausewitz when Shock and Awe can make a clean sweep of things?<\/em> \u00bb. (Nous avons d\u00e9j\u00e0 rencontr\u00e9 Bacevitch, le 23 mai<\/a> notamment, o\u00f9 certaines des explications qu’il donne compl\u00e8tent les id\u00e9es qu’il rapporte ici.) Il s’agit bien de montrer que l’instrument (les forces arm\u00e9es des Etats-Unis) avait \u00e9galement jou\u00e9 le r\u00f4le d’outil appr\u00e9ci\u00e9 comme d’une puissance telle qu’il tint \u00e9galement le r\u00f4le d’un renforcement de la th\u00e8se inspirant l’action qui fut appliqu\u00e9e en Irak, car il s’agit bien d’une th\u00e8se, d’un complot, d’un Grand Design<\/em>, etc.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tAnalysant Cobra II<\/em>, Bacevitch nous rappelle ce qui fut souvent exprim\u00e9 plus ou moins clairement avant la guerre, qui fut dilu\u00e9 sous les coups de la sp\u00e9culation et de la propagande, qui reste compl\u00e8tement fondamental et qui appara\u00eet comme tr\u00e8s largement document\u00e9 dans ce livre. A cette lumi\u00e8re, on comprend quel d\u00e9sastre aux proportions inimaginables constitue, pour les architectes de la chose, l’actuelle situation en Irak.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00ab One point above all stands out: the rationale for the war had next to nothing to do with the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Weapons of mass destruction offered little more than a convenient pretext for a war conjured up to serve a multiplicity of ends. Neither the Baath Party regime nor the Iraqi army, crippled by defeat and well over a decade of sanctions, threatened anyone other than the Iraqi people. The hawks in the Bush administration understood this quite well. They hankered to invade Iraq not because Saddam was strong and dangerous but because he was weak and vulnerable, not because he was implicated in 9\/11 but because he looked like an easy mark.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bb For the war’s architects, Iraq was not a danger to avoid but a strategic opportunity, less a destination than a point of departure. In their eyes, 2003 was not 1945, but 1939: not a climax but the opening gambit of a vast enterprise largely hidden from public view. Allusions to Saddam as a new Hitler notwithstanding, they did not see Baghdad as Berlin but as Warsaw a preliminary objective. For the war’s most determined proponents Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz toppling Saddam was the first phase of what was expected to be a long campaign. In Iraq they intended to set precedents, thereby facilitating other actions to follow. Although Bush portrayed himself as a reluctant warrior for whom armed conflict was a last resort, key members of his administration were determined that nothing should get in the way of a showdown with Saddam. In crafting a strategy for Iraq, the undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith insisted to one baffled US general, we cannot accept surrender. The object of the exercise was to demolish constraints on the subsequent employment of American power. Merely promulgating a doctrine of preventive war would not be enough: it was imperative actually to implement that doctrine.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \tMis en ligne le 8 juin 2006 \u00e0 05H13<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" De fa\u00e7on assez curieuse et caract\u00e9ristique de notre situation, la question de la cause de la guerre en Irak semble toujours pos\u00e9e et ouverte, elle semble appara\u00eetre comme un myst\u00e8re persistant, une pol\u00e9mique incompl\u00e8tement conduite \u00e0 son terme. Les arguments continuent \u00e0 s’\u00e9changer (p\u00e9trole, rancur contre Saddam, certains croient m\u00eame encore aux fictions des arguments… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5422,5477,5478,2662,5147,2957,2645,3183,857,5476],"class_list":["post-67632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-bacevitch","tag-cobra","tag-dessein","tag-en","tag-gordon","tag-grand","tag-guerre","tag-ii","tag-irak","tag-trainor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}