This morning, two decades ago, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ began. A bombing campaign of ‘shock and awe’ was launched, with George W. Bush promising to ‘disarm Iraq and to free its people’. In the 20 years since, some of The Spectator’s best writers have wrestled with the Iraq war. Below are extracts from some of their pieces, which you can find on our fully-digitised archive:

The case for war

‘What’s the real long-term war aim of the United States? I’d say it’s this — to bring the Middle East within the civilised world.