Iraq is just a symbol of the attitude of western democracies to the rest of the world.

Pinter frames the Iraq war not as an isolated policy error but as an emblem of a broader pattern: Western democracies proclaim universal values—human rights, rule of law, self-determination—while exercising power abroad through coercion, intervention, and selective moral accounting. Calling Iraq a “symbol” shifts attention from the particulars of one conflict to the underlying posture of dominance and double standards that, in his view, governs relations between powerful states and the “rest of the world.” The line also implies that democratic legitimacy at home does not automatically translate into ethical conduct internationally, and that rhetoric of liberation can mask strategic interests and impunity.