Breaking the ‘Pottery Barn rule’

Breaking the ‘Pottery Barn rule’

In the run-up to the second Iraq War, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell allegedly told President George W. Bush: “If you break it, you own it.” Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage privately called this the “Pottery Barn rule.”  In the ensuing years, politicians and commentators alike have used the phrase to describe the idea that what the U.S. military destroys, it is obligated to rebuild and, if need be, occupy.  The phrase is meant to ha…