Politics & Power Quote by Brent Scowcroft

Orderly, paternal, and deceptively modest, Scowcroft's line is the kind of Washington realism that tries to smuggle a whole war into the language of civic maintenance. "Need help establishing a government" frames Iraq less as a sovereign country than as a malfunctioning state apparatus awaiting competent technicians. The verb choice matters: not "choose" or "build", but "establish" - as if legitimacy can be installed, like infrastructure, once the right conditions are set.

Then comes the hinge word: "security". In U.S. national security rhetoric, security is never just police and patrols; it's the enabling environment that justifies almost any footprint. By saying "We have to provide them with security", Scowcroft converts intervention into obligation. It's a moral claim ("have to") wrapped in bureaucratic neutrality ("provide"). That combination is powerful because it dodges the messier questions - who decides what counts as security, how long it lasts, and what happens when "providing" starts to look like occupying.

The context is the post-9/11 argument over Iraq, when the Bush administration was selling regime change as liberation and modernization. Scowcroft, a consummate establishment operator and former national security adviser, had warned against Iraq precisely because he understood the trap embedded in his own sentence: if you break a state, you inherit its afterlife. The subtext is less cheerleading than caution. Once you accept the premise that Iraqis "need" American help, you're also accepting the open-ended responsibility for the chaos that follows - and the political need to call that responsibility "security" instead of what it often becomes: control.