On April 9, 2003, Baghdad fell to an American-led coalition. The removal of Saddam Hussein and the toppling of a whole succession of other Arab dictators in 2011 were closely connected — a fact that has been overlooked largely because of the hostility that the Iraq war engendered,  writes  professor Kanan Makiya.

Read more in the New York Times

Kanan Makiya is a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University and the author of “Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq” and“Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising, and the Arab World.”