Success Quote by Lakhdar Brahimi

Brahimi’s line is a diplomatic rebuke dressed up as plain description, and that restraint is the point. By insisting Iraq “has been invaded,” he refuses the softer vocabulary that usually launders responsibility: “intervention,” “stabilization,” “state-building.” The syntax does moral accounting. “It’s not a failing state that you want to help” punctures the humanitarian storyline that framed the 2003 war as rescue work. He’s telling you: don’t confuse the arsonist with the firefighter.

The subtext is aimed at Western capitals and the international institutions that followed them. If Iraq’s dysfunction is treated as an internal collapse, outsiders get to pose as benevolent managers. If it’s treated as an invasion, then the central fact becomes agency and consequence: power broke the thing, so power can’t pretend to be a neutral repair crew. That’s why he concedes the obvious - “good or bad, with a horrible dictator” - without granting the rhetorical victory. Acknowledging Saddam’s brutality preempts the common comeback (“so you preferred the dictator?”) while keeping the focus on the illegitimacy and destabilizing effects of the war.

Context matters: Brahimi worked inside the UN machinery tasked with cleaning up after the invasion, including political transition efforts. The quote reads like a warning about category error. Call Iraq a “failing state” and you justify endless tutelage. Call it “invaded” and you’re forced to talk about sovereignty, accountability, and the limits of outside engineering. It works because it turns a geopolitical argument into a naming fight - and naming is where policy gets its alibi.