"It is impossible to exaggerate the wide, and widening, gulf between the American attitude on the Iraq war and the view from our friends across the Atlantic"
About this Quote
A “wide, and widening, gulf” is doing double duty here: it’s geography as judgment, the Atlantic turned into a moral measuring stick. Nick Clooney’s line lands as a warning wrapped in a lament. The phrasing is deliberately expansive - not just a disagreement, but an “impossible to exaggerate” rupture. That hyperbole isn’t sloppy; it’s strategic. By claiming exaggeration can’t keep up with reality, Clooney frames the split as self-evident, the kind of fact you’d have to work to deny.
The intent is to isolate an American reflex during the Iraq War era: the conviction that U.S. resolve equals legitimacy, even when allies balk. “American attitude” is pointedly broad, suggesting a cultural posture - certainty, impatience with dissent - more than a policy memo. Against it, “the view from our friends across the Atlantic” softens the critique while sharpening the stakes. Calling Europeans “friends” invokes shared history and reciprocity; it’s an appeal to a relationship being squandered, not a scolding from an enemy. The subtext: America is risking not only strategic cooperation but its self-image as leader of a liberal order.
Context matters. Post-9/11 politics rewarded hawkish clarity and treated allied skepticism as weakness or ingratitude. Clooney’s sentence pushes back against that mood by reframing European opposition as a mirror, not an obstacle. The “widening” suggests time is running against reconciliation: every new justification, every photo-op, every casualty makes the gap harder to bridge. It’s less about winning an argument than about preventing a lasting realignment where America discovers too late that it has been arguing alone.
The intent is to isolate an American reflex during the Iraq War era: the conviction that U.S. resolve equals legitimacy, even when allies balk. “American attitude” is pointedly broad, suggesting a cultural posture - certainty, impatience with dissent - more than a policy memo. Against it, “the view from our friends across the Atlantic” softens the critique while sharpening the stakes. Calling Europeans “friends” invokes shared history and reciprocity; it’s an appeal to a relationship being squandered, not a scolding from an enemy. The subtext: America is risking not only strategic cooperation but its self-image as leader of a liberal order.
Context matters. Post-9/11 politics rewarded hawkish clarity and treated allied skepticism as weakness or ingratitude. Clooney’s sentence pushes back against that mood by reframing European opposition as a mirror, not an obstacle. The “widening” suggests time is running against reconciliation: every new justification, every photo-op, every casualty makes the gap harder to bridge. It’s less about winning an argument than about preventing a lasting realignment where America discovers too late that it has been arguing alone.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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