eightyonekilograms:

balioc:

kontextmaschine:

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 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”.

…the Iraq War – the (cultivated) reaction to it, and then the backlash to that reaction, and then the fallout from the actual war being such a huge debacle – ended the decade-and-a-half End of History.

Even if it had no lasting geopolitical impact whatsoever (which seems like a stretch), its impact on the American psyche was quite enough to be a History-Defining Big Deal all by itself.

Which seems like it would be your jam.

Yeah this post is just nuts to me. Even if you set aside the immense suffering of the Iraqis themselves, which you absolutely should not do, off the top of my head I can name three colossal impacts of the Iraq War plus a fourth probably-colossal one.

1. It killed neoconservatism stone dead. The neocons had steadily built their prestige and influence over the 80s and 90s, and with the second Bush Administration they had finally graduated to being the official ideology of the Republican Party, to the point where even plenty of liberals at the time were at least flirting with it. Then Iraq completely shattered their credibility, the GOP has pivoted hard to Burnhamist paleoconservatism, and now the seven or eight remaining neocons in Washington are at their sad little #NeverTrump parties, the most marginal of the marginal.
2. Related to this, since OP is not exactly a young Democrat I don’t think he understands just how deeply disillusioned and cynical a lot of young American leftists became towards the Democratic party specifically because of Iraq. In a couple swing states, Hillary Clinton only lost by a few tenths of a percent, where Democratic turned plummeted compared to Obama in 2012. Could Hillary have won in 2016, completely discrediting Trumpism and vindicating all the predictions that it would be the suicide of the GOP, if not for her support of the Iraq War? We will never know, but it is crazy to not even consider the possibility.
3. It was directly responsible for the Ukraine war. Prior to Iraq, Russia was not exactly a friendly state but at least somewhat tried to participate in the legitimacy of the international order. Iraq firmly convinced them that the international order was bullshit, which is why South Ossetia was annexed in 2008 as warmup to Ukraine in 2014 and the war today.
4. See “the decade of concern” by the Scholar’s Stage. tl;dr, armed forces have to do a complete overhaul every 10-15 years, the Iraq War hit pause on the overhaul of that process for the US military and so now they’re scrambling to complete this overhaul in the 2020s, during which time we are extremely not ready for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. If that invasion does happen this decade, Iraq will be a major part of why.

Okay,

First I mean, I’m starting from the premise that American unipolar dominance would end in some way in a similar timeframe, maybe if you were savescumming you could get 20 more years out of it. And 2000s-era neoconservatism, as an ideology premised on that dominance, would have necessarily been discredited with it. That cancels out on both sides of the counterfactual.

Similarly for 3, “national rivals come to realize that America is overextended and cannot maintain international hegemony” was baked in already with the expiration of the post-Cold War honeymoon.

“It had significant shaping effects on the composition and balance of domestic factions.” ok I’ll give you that. But so did Vietnam!

Antiwar activity was hugely important to party realignment! This was how primary-based presidential nomination came into being! The weapons spending-earned loyalty of labor vs. the ferment of campus activism introduced an education gap within the Democratic Party that is hugely important to this day!

But like… okay? You can learn that in college, but it’s not part of the central narrative of America.

Yeah, we strained the post-Vietnam “all-volunteer force” and the slimmed-down post-Cold War capital structure, remember “stop-loss orders”? And school friends who enlisted all reported encountering some guys who musta got in by lowered standards. But we made it through, and you could honestly put “and this operation strained existing systems and traded off against preparation vs. other enemies” in the histories of any war, but you don’t. (Unless you know in advance those vulnerabilities get exploited in the next chapter)