Popular conflation of Arabs, Muslims, and terrorism enabled the Iraq war.

Evidence

Iraq was not Al-Qaeda, but in the minds of most Americans, the distinction was irrelevant. Arabs were Muslims, Muslims were Arabs, and the two conflated identities were tied to terrorism. This was the Orientalist logic that Said dedicated his life to interrogating and undoing, a logic that reemerged more violently during the War on Terror, with deadlier global ramifications. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 268

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Same mechanism as the tree-as-infrastructure and sacrifice pieces: a flattened category or symbol takes on real destructive force because enough people misread it, echoing how grafted or sacrificial logics operate beyond their origin.
• XREF: connects to: The Iraq War strengthened US rivals while alienating its allies