Machiavellianism and David Hare's Play "Stuff Happens"

Abstract

The play "Stuff Happens" (2006), written by a contemporary British writer, David Hare, addresses the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 under the pretense that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. However, the events that followed the invasion revealed that the US had actually invaded Iraq for the purpose of imposing its power and control over the country by using Machiavellian tactics like misleading, manipulation, and deception. The play also deals with another issue related to the Machiavellian theory, which is the issue of hegemony and tyranny with regard to the United States and its relationship with the distant world (the East) and the other near (the West), which illustrates the American authoritarian tendency on both (the others). When the decision is in your hands, it can mislead many of those around you, both locally and globally.

The sequence of events in this play in which the writer Hare presents a true picture of the planning process by presenting the conversations that took place between officials in the United States government and their allies during the planning of this occupation by transposing the words of these officials literally in the text of the play, thus emphasizing that the process of occupying Iraq happened after the United States clearly applied everything found in this theory of Machiavellianism in the planning process for the occupation of Iraq to prove that the principle of "the end justifies the means" was clear in the style of the US administration headed by "Bush" in addition to the other personalities represented by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powel and the ally British Prime Minister Blair.

This study concludes that the reliance on the Machiavellian theory, which can be summarized in the phrase "the end justifies the means,"  and the reliance of the United States on methods such as manipulation and deception of others while planning the occupation of Iraq in order to achieve its goals in the end.