Politics & Power Quote by Pete Domenici

The real work of this sentence isn’t persuasion so much as choreography: it tries to move Iraqis, Americans, and wavering allies into the same frame where invasion reads as assistance and occupation sounds like partnership. Domenici’s key move is temporal. “Saddam Hussein and his regime are history” turns a violent regime-change operation into a settled fact, as if the future has already ratified the means. It’s not just prediction; it’s narrative foreclosure. If Saddam is “history,” then resistance is automatically anachronistic, a refusal to accept reality rather than a political choice.

“Better understand” carries a quiet condescension. The obstacle isn’t Iraqi agency or legitimate fear of foreign control; it’s Iraqi comprehension. That phrasing shifts responsibility for consent onto the people being acted upon: if they don’t “get behind” the coalition, the implication is that they’re confused, misinformed, or clinging to the past.

The sentence also performs a careful moral laundering through the word “help.” The coalition is positioned as a benevolent facilitator, not a power with strategic interests. “Create a democratic government” makes democracy sound like an exportable product, and “rebuild their country” nods at damage without naming who caused it. Even the possessive “their” does double duty: it flatters Iraqi sovereignty while leaving coalition authority intact.

Context matters: this is the early-2000s post-invasion messaging ecosystem, where “democracy” and “reconstruction” operated as legitimacy tokens meant to outlast the images of shock-and-awe. The intent is reassurance, but the subtext is control: acceptance is framed as enlightenment, and dissent as irrational delay.