Making enemies

A meticulous new history examines the best intentions and blunders that led to the invasion of Iraq three decades ago. 

- PETER GRACE

CONFRONTING SADDAM HUSSEIN: George W Bush and the invasion of Iraq, by Melvyn P Leffler (Oxford University Press, £21.99)

It is 30 years since Saddam Hussein's relentlessly brutal reign came to an end. The Butcher of Baghdad got dug out of a hole, about the same time as the US dug itself into one.

US historian Melvyn Leffler is known as a meticulous, perhaps even nitpicking, scholar, not a fast writer by any means.

Yet his books are all the more valuable because of it, and he writes in an engaging style that belies his potential overzealousness. His 1992 book A Preponderance of Power: National security, the Truman administration, and the Cold War is the go-to book on the early East-West confrontation. In it, he takes particular care to detail how president Harry Truman decided the Soviets were an adversary, rather than a wayward friend.

These days, the West has plenty of wayward friends, and a few future - if not current - adversaries. Leffler's new book, Confronting Saddam Hussein, is not so much a narrative about the Iraqi dictator as a detailed account of how enemies are constructed. It is also a very US-centric story, with Leffler amplifying the echo chamber rather than objectively noting it. Perhaps he is right to, as it has never gone away.

The book begins with the story of a common thug. It is not a tale for the squeamish. Saddam grows up letting his fist do the talking, and makes killing people, including dropping them into acid baths, his route to power.