"Hussein has a strategy. I'm sure he'll implement that strategy, and it would be to our detriment. We're embarking on an exercise about which we know nothing"
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The line is political jujitsu: it borrows the language of strategic seriousness, then turns it into a warning flare about national incompetence. By conceding that "Hussein has a strategy", Hewson grants the adversary the one thing leaders most want associated with themselves: clarity. The point isn’t to flatter Saddam Hussein; it’s to shame the decision-makers at home. If the enemy is coherent, and we are not, the real scandal is not his planning but our improvisation.
"I'm sure he'll implement that strategy" sounds like certainty, but it’s really an indictment of wishful thinking. Hewson is attacking the fantasy that hostile regimes collapse under the weight of our confidence. He frames Hussein as predictable in the most dangerous way: committed. That sets up the emotional pivot to "our detriment", a phrase doing double duty. It gestures toward national risk while implying political culpability: detriment not as tragic accident, but as foreseeable consequence.
"We're embarking on an exercise about which we know nothing" is the kill shot. Calling war (or intervention) an "exercise" strips it of moral romance and exposes it as bureaucratic overreach, a project plan with missing pages. The subtext is institutional: intelligence gaps, unclear objectives, and leaders selling certainty they don’t possess. Hewson’s intent is less to debate Hussein’s character than to demand epistemic humility from his own side: if you can’t articulate what you know, you’re not leading; you’re gambling with other people’s lives.
"I'm sure he'll implement that strategy" sounds like certainty, but it’s really an indictment of wishful thinking. Hewson is attacking the fantasy that hostile regimes collapse under the weight of our confidence. He frames Hussein as predictable in the most dangerous way: committed. That sets up the emotional pivot to "our detriment", a phrase doing double duty. It gestures toward national risk while implying political culpability: detriment not as tragic accident, but as foreseeable consequence.
"We're embarking on an exercise about which we know nothing" is the kill shot. Calling war (or intervention) an "exercise" strips it of moral romance and exposes it as bureaucratic overreach, a project plan with missing pages. The subtext is institutional: intelligence gaps, unclear objectives, and leaders selling certainty they don’t possess. Hewson’s intent is less to debate Hussein’s character than to demand epistemic humility from his own side: if you can’t articulate what you know, you’re not leading; you’re gambling with other people’s lives.
Quote Details
| Topic | Vision & Strategy |
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