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US foreign policy has been defined by its schizoid nature. A nation forged in revolution against an imperial colossus has for two centuries struggled to accept that it has taken the mantle of its historical nemesis. Yet even a teenage superhero can understand that with great power comes great responsibility. For a superpower, foreign policy requires constant investment in far more than kevlar and jet-fuel.

On 11th September 2001, I watched events in the US with the same slack-jawed horror as much of the rest of the world. I also found myself fervently hoping that such a brazen expression of hatred for the US would make the Bush administration pause for thought. Had reckless foreign policy adventures created dangerous new enemies? Should those policies be jettisoned or re-thought? How in the aftermath of Cold War victory had the US managed to lose the battle for hearts and minds so completely? This iconic outrage would after all come to define the early 21st century and should be made a cause for securing peace, not a new excuse for blundering and bloody foreign adventures.

The Bush response was distinguished only by its cynicism. The Afghan intervention was predictable and justifiable; the Taliban were one of the world's most egregiously cruel regimes and there was an audit trail between Al-Qaeda and Kandahar. The Iraqi intervention however was based on a lie so monstrous that even Hitler would have blushed. Attempts to shore up this lie in the US and the UK were derisory, but almost as shocking as the dishonesty of statesmen was their public's willing credulity.

To justify an aggressive and wholly imperial intervention in Iraq, Bush insinuated a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. Blair reinforced the Bush policy line, possibly in defiance of his own sensibilities, because acting as trusty sidekick to the US is the UK's only remaining route to great power status. As if to prove that ignorance and hatred are good bedfellows, ordinary Americans not only approved of the intervention, they indulged in vociferous loathing for anyone at home or abroad who dissented. Seemingly without irony, those who didn't tow the Bush line were castigated as enemies of freedom and democracy.

The 9/11 attack caused in the region of 3,000 civilian deaths. So far, the invasion of Iraq has caused in excess of 80,000 civilian deaths. Plainly, the Iraqi death toll was always going to be inconsequential; the deaths were less dramatic and more mundane than those searing images of New

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