How the Iraq war became a threat to American democracy

Twenty years ago, President George W. Bush stood before the American people and proposed a radical intervention to head off a growing menace in one of the world’s most troubled regions. “Seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many,” he said in his state-of-the-union message in 2003.

The years would prove him right. Millions more people would have died of HIV/AIDS in Africa if Mr Bush had not defied his party’s isolationist wing, ever contemptuous of foreign assistance, and pressed Congress to spend billions of dollars on what became, at least pre-covid, the largest commitment ever by a nation to fight a single disease. Mr Bush’s initiative was not just compassionate but wise. Would that it was his defining act.