You can’t make America great again by making it retreat again

Dr. David Wurmser: t’s actually what hasn’t happened. There’s no crisp definition of what MAGA is, going forward, and what we’re seeing now is a battle over the soul of the movement. The term-turned-epithet “neoconservatism” became a kind of clarion call on the part of those who hated Israel, were antisemitic or classic leftists like “The Squad.” It became a rubric, and the Iraq War became a symbol of how “evil” the neoconservatives were. Of course, the history of that war has been distorted. The people I was dealing with at the time had a very different vision of how it would progress from the way it’s been depicted by detractors. It was much less a colonialist American vision than an Iraqi one. It was Colin Powell’s vision to go in with 600,000 troops, and then it was Paul Bremer’s idea to have a colonial presence in Iraq to rebuild the country. That was horrifying to many of us. We wanted Iraqis to do the heavy lifting of liberating their country; we wanted them to assume control as fast as possible. Our model was the Free French in World War II.

Published in JNS, February 03, 2025.