Politics & Power Quote by John Conyers

Conyers frames the Iraq War not as a battlefield problem but as a self-inflicted political loop: the very instrument meant to stabilize Iraq becomes the accelerant of disorder. The key move is his use of institutional validation. By invoking General Casey and “numerous other experts,” he borrows the military’s credibility to launder what would otherwise be dismissed as partisan dissent. It’s a canny reversal of the post-9/11 rhetorical hierarchy, where “supporting the troops” was often used to silence questions about the mission. Here, the troops themselves, via their commanders’ assessments, become evidence against the strategy.

The subtext is indictment without melodrama. “Presence” does a lot of work: it suggests that the mere fact of occupation, not just specific mistakes, produces backlash. That’s a direct challenge to the comforting idea that a better plan or better messaging could fix the war. Conyers is pointing at a structural dynamic familiar from insurgencies: foreign forces can unify fragmented resistance, provide propaganda visuals, and create a steady supply of grievances that armed groups convert into recruits.

The second clause widens the blast radius. Iraq is cast as a global recruiting poster, implying that national security is being weakened in the name of national security. In the mid-2000s context - rising sectarian violence, mounting U.S. casualties, and growing skepticism about WMD claims - this argument aimed to shift the debate from “are we winning?” to “are we manufacturing the enemy?” It’s less a policy critique than a warning about how power, when misapplied, reproduces the threats it claims to eliminate.