This chapter talks about the contradictions in the United States’s invasion of Iraq. In particular, the text suggests that the impending Iraq war was about Iraq, but it was also about the direction of world politics and of America. Another irony: to the extent that the war was about the future of the Iraqi people, the diplomatic establishment in the United States and Europe has been and continues to be a model of cynical, Metternichean unconcern. But to the extent that the war was about aggrandizing the Bush administration at the expense of international cooperation and American democracy, this same establishment—and the transnational corporations it represents—could be, for the moment, our best hope. The author also laments the looting of Iraq’s historic museum and burning of the national library in full view of American troops, arguing that, while the loss of life in war is terrible, the loss of a cultural legacy is arguably worse.