So if we’re all doing our retrospective takes on the Iraq War, mine was… it wasn’t that big a deal? In scale, direction, and costs borne and imposed it was basically well within norms for what the country might get distracted with over a two-decade period.

Already within my lifetime the specter of the Vietnam War, once much more significant in national affairs, looms not nearly as large as I remember it doing in the ‘80s (indeed, the easy victories of the “Desert Shield/Storm” Iraq excursion of the early '90s were specifically hailed for dispelling this “Vietnam Syndrome”), as a colorful but not particularly important chapter of 20th Century American history.

While the action did not serve to renew America’s post-Cold War unipolar “hyperpower” moment, I honestly don’t think it accelerated its end any, which looks to be more a product of the development of China and reassertion of Russia than any “Clash of Civilizations”.