Abstract
In May 2023 I listened to two of Britain’s most prominent political commentators, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, interviewing a former high-ranking government official, Jonathan Powell, for their Leading podcast—a spinoff from their highly successful podcast The Rest Is Politics. After thirty minutes, the subject of Iraq came up. All three had been closely involved in the 2003 invasion: Powell as chief of staff to then prime minister Tony Blair, and Campbell as Blair’s director of communications and strategy. Both had been in the thick of policy- and decision-making at the highest level of government as Britain prepared for war. Stewart’s experience had been utterly different; having completed a walking tour of north-central Afghanistan in 2002, he had served as deputy governor of two provinces in the marsh regions of southern raq, confronting the occupation’s consequences and the ground truth of security, reconstruction, and peacebuilding in a country hollowed out by oppression, conflict, and now occupation.
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