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https://theconversation.com/iraq-wars-aftermath-was-a-disaster-for-the-us-the-iran-war-is-headed-in-the-same-direction-277585>
"The United States military achieved every objective it set when it went to war
in Iraq in 2003. Decapitation: Saddam Hussein was captured, tried and hanged.
Air dominance: total, within days. Regime collapse: The Iraqi government fell
in 21 days.
Now, consider Iraq more than 20 years after the U.S.-Iraq war. Iraq is still an
authoritarian state governed by political parties with deep institutional ties
to Tehran. Iranian-backed militias operate openly on Iraqi soil – some holding
official positions within the Iraqi state.
The country the U.S. spent US$2 trillion and 4,488 American lives to remake is,
by any reasonable measure, within the sphere of Iran’s influence.
As an international security scholar specializing in nuclear security and
alliance politics in the Middle East, I have tracked the pattern of U.S.
military success across multiple cases.
But the military outcome and the political outcome are almost never the same
thing, and the gap between them is where wars fail.
Two and a half millennia ago, Thucydides recorded the Athenian empire at its
most confident in his “History of the Peloponnesian War”: “The strong do what
they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Athens then destroyed Melos and
launched the Sicily Expedition with overwhelming force and no coherent theory
of governance for what came next.
The lesson, then and now, is not that empires cannot destroy. It’s that
destruction and governance are entirely different enterprises. And confusing
them is how empires exhaust themselves.
The U.S. military can destroy the Iranian regime. The question that the Iraq
precedent answers – with brutal clarity – is what fills the power vacuum when
it does?"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
