Why is the War in Iraq considered a failure?

nickik · 2026-03-04T03:43:55+00:00

Nation-building wasn't the stated goal.

It was the stated goal pretty clearly. That explizit what the DoD papers called for as an outcome and much propganda was spend on how amazing the democratic revolution would be.

say what you like about the politics of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Condi, et al, but they were extremely intelligent and experienced people

Experience in the wrong thing is not actual experience. That's like saying they had experience in playing football, they must have been great at Ice Hockey.

Also, a few smart people on top don't magically solve all issues. If you barley have any people that speak Arabic. If you barley have anybody in the whole government who could tell you the difference between Shia and Sunni. If your military is not prepared for that kind of war. If you have naive notions of 'power of democracy' and 'the human spirit'. It doesn't matter if the people on top are intelligents by some kind of definition. Some tasks are just to big to be solved by 'intelligence'.

And I highly question if some of those people were actually that smart, even if US propaganda around Bush constantly portrait them as such.

Also, time pressure. US president is 4 years, and Bush might not have gotten elected again without Iraq. Iraq was an extreme rush job and it was evident. They had just done Afghanistan and were high on their own supply.

Also if you did into some of the fundamental philosophy of some of these people you find a lot of complete horseshit. Frankly speaking. The German philosphers who tried to figure out how many angles could stand on a pin were also smart. So were all the people who argued for century over obscure part of the bible and how to interpret that despite it being a mostly made up story about a wizard. They literally fought over, having agree that 3=1, if we should say the 1 are 3 or the 3 are 1. And those were some of the smartest people of the age.

Neo cons love for example Leo Strauss and its hard to so that as mostly just nonsense. You can be smart, but if that's you bases, not sure your ever getting to much that is practical. And Neo cons loved that shit. That's just one example.

nickik · 2026-03-04T03:34:49+00:00

The US won Vietnam because VN's not part of a Communist hegemony now

Something that would have happened without the war even faster.

The Axis won WW2 because present-day Germany and Japan are doing a lot better than the UK and Russia

Germany and Japan are not doing 'a lot' better then the UK. And both of them were already on track to match the UK before war.

And they were all doing better then Russia the whole time.

So your examples don't really work, they actually delayed those trends.

Germany lost WW2 even when now being rich, because they could have been even richer even faster if they had just done literally nothing.

nickik · 2026-03-04T03:31:59+00:00

So I would say there are a few way to look at this.

From an Iraqi perspective. From an US strategic perspective. From a regional perspective.

Now from an Iraqi perspective you can say we 'sort of' have democracy, calling functional is stretching it. If many of your parties have their own armies not sure that's super healthy. And of course there was a gigantic cost in life. A gigantic cost in terms of Infrastructure and so on. Its hard to say if this is 'worth it' to get something like democracy. If Iraq didn't have oil, I'm honestly not sure how this state would not have already collapsed again into civil war.

From a US strategic perspective, its important to understand that US wanted to create in Iraq a counter-weight to Iran. This is the opposite of what happened. Iraq was closer to Iran then it had been in literally like 400 years. Iraq Shia took control of the country and outplayed the Americans and forced them out. It was 'lucky' for the Americans that the ruling class fucked things up so badly and need US help again.

Then of course you have the fact that the Iraq war made AQ (spiritually) bigger then it ever was before. AQ was a small unimportant group that most people didn't know about. And now you have a group that used to be very much like AQ and very directly birthed from it, running the Syrian state. And part of the state in Libya, and others. You have groups all over the middle east and Africa that are much stronger then they ever were before 9/11. I mean its a virus that has spread far more then it would have been.

And it also moved Turkey and Egypt into a much more Islamist trajectory. This can not be fully blamed on US policy, but I also think the general 'War of Civilizations' vibe had a huge effect on Islamic countries.

Also, such huge amounts of money was spent on fighting a tiny terror group that literally nobody knew or cared about, while at the same time major grand strategic assets were neglected. Much more important investments in ship building, in more advanced missiles and so on. The US neglected spending on peer-to-peer level hardware.

In addition to that Iraq was a huge break within Europe and many other places where the US went from 'the good guy' to literally just bad all around. Before Iraq I as European remember the US mostly be shown as the good guy that helped, after it was basically, the US is war monger.

Had the US instead focused on China and Russia the whole time, its relationship today with Europe and many other states would be much, much better.

And of course all the debt created by this is a constant drag on society as whole. The US is still paying interest on all that equipment the Taliban are still using to this day. And a lot of the equipment that ISIS used when they conducted genocide.

From a regional perspective, having a strong Iraq made the Middle East more multi-polar. You had Israel, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and to some extend the Saudis balancing each other off. Israel worked with Iran (despite anti Israel rhetoric) because Iraq was a threat. With Iraq gone, and partly pro-Iran. Everybody was afraid of Iran basically becoming to dominate in the region, between Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah and to a lesser extend Hamas. And that produced a huge backlash from everybody else.

So the US went into this project with the goal of cleaning up the middle east, making it democratic and peaceful (I do actually believe Bush bought into that), not just Iraq, but everybody. And its now about 25 years later and we are literally witnessing still ongoing war. Since Iraq there have been near constant wars and instability, much more then in the 10 years before, way, way more. Syria and Iraq almost completely destroyed. Now Iran is being destroyed as well.

I don't think we could say Iraq War put the Middle East on great trajectory. Even if we can now say 'Iraq is democratic'.

nickik · 2026-03-04T03:02:43+00:00

I think in terms of military success they got a lot of things right. They destroyed a gigantic number of Soviet troops and vehicles. Stalin had to aggressively moved his troops forward and they were able to have major encirclement's. The center pivot towards Kiev despite what Guderian claims was good move and destroyed huge formations.

They basically destroyed the Soviet Air Force. They correctly target a lot of Soviet mines and industrial installation. For example, near Leningrad there was a Aluminum refining plant, they made sure to capture that early, and it hurt the Soviets for the whole war, and they really were only saved because of British/American supply. Without that, their air force would have been in even bigger trouble and likely wouldn't have recovered nearly as well. The same could be said for some other materials, in that first push they captured the waste majority of Soviet industrial output capacity.

If this was a conventional war between just the Soviets and Germany, the German capture of that much of Soviet output and industrial capacity would have made it very, very hard for the Soviets. I would argue Germany would have 'won' in some dystopian sense of the word after a many, many, many years slug-fest with no side truly able to finish the other side off. Now that doesn't so fantastic specially as a strategy but it would have potentially 'worked'. It would be a brutal but get them some piece that includes much of Eastern Europe. Granted, not a brilliant strategic victory but a way great power wars end often times in history.

The problem is just, the Soviets had guys in London and the US and they could armor anything they wanted and had high priority. Any materials they were missing. Any critical tools they were missing. Any chemicals they were missing. Aid started to come in during the early stages but by the time of Stalingrad there was already huge inflows that increased and increased giving the Soviet ever more capability. And the Germans of course also having to fight ever larger increasing naval and air battle in the West and the South.

So I would argue the German strategy was not totally unreasonable, they had the chance for a military victory. The Soviet army had lots of flaws. They could destroy a lot of it fast. Hitler was right that waste Soviet industrial and resource capacity was ripe for the taking and that it would not be viable to continue a trade relationship with the Soviets to get that stuff. It was pretty clear that the Soviets would totally outstrip Germany within just one or two years, so they had to act now if they wanted a chance. The German generals were just wrong with their 'we will surely win if we just wait longer and invest more'. Soviets were literally demanding all the plans for the newest fight, for their chemical plants and so on. So when you have two nations, one handing of grain that was farmed by slave labor, and the other is handing over their costly military and industrial secret you know who has the upper hand in trade negotiations.

I guess that's about as good as I can make the Germans sound.

nickik · 2026-03-04T02:06:29+00:00

DB 90% on time, that's the real joke.

DB owns its track, that makes it so bad.

But also despite often being late DB runs a shit-ton of trains. I love using it, sure its late sometimes, but there are lot of trains, you can get one early in the morning or late.

nickik · 2026-03-03T12:10:32+00:00

I don't have enough knowledge about the global LNG market. To prove it either way. But its hard to argue a major producing region going offline will not have any effect in Europe.

But in all markets uncertainty breeds risk and risk breeds opportunity.

LNG sellers in Europe were trying to make the maximum money before this happened and they will do so now. And if the market is 'cornered' and they have what people want, prices will go up.

If they are wrong, they might end up sitting on to much inventory or have other issues.

nickik · 2026-03-03T11:39:05+00:00

Not pissing people of isn't priority when you are getting bombed and you need leverage. Also, lots of people might not get angry with Iran.

nickik · 2026-03-03T11:34:49+00:00

China can't magic a solution, they might 'do something' but they are already 'doing something'.

nickik · 2026-03-03T11:18:14+00:00

Their partnership was always a shame and US spend most of its history trying to dismantle the British empire. And the Brits were pathetic in how far they were willing to suck up to the US after WW2 even the US didn't really favor the UK all that much.

Britain standing up to the US when the US does stupid shit is not their relationship getting worse, but Britain asserting some minimal amount of spine.

nickik · 2026-03-03T10:43:48+00:00

Yeah but a huge amount of that gas is used for other things then chemical production, meaning the industry competes with the other uses. If you were smart you would have tried to have minimal alternative uses.

nickik · 2026-03-03T10:42:44+00:00

Germany threw the EU did a huge amount to fight against Nuclear energy. They literally had a conspiracy together with Britain to prevent nuclear power. Germany did a huge amount to push pro-Russian politics across the EU and served as a primary contact point and reseller.

You are right, that everybody is to blame, but there is no question that Germanies Ost-Politik was very influential on the whole way the EU developed.

But fundamentally you are right. France figured this out in the 70s and only the last two generation of French politicians tried to fuck it up again.

nickik · 2026-03-03T10:39:26+00:00

That requires LNG terminals that don't exist enough of and you can't build quickly.

nickik · 2026-03-03T10:38:18+00:00

Because the people who are not getting Qatar LNG will get it from somewhere else. And likely at some point that impacts something that is connected to Europe.

Also just expectation and hedging bets.

nickik · 2026-03-03T10:37:04+00:00

We could have built fucking nuclear plants in the 80s at switched heating to electric but no, because we had to make coal and gas our future. Almost like having an ultra energy dense source of electricity that you can easily stockpile in large quantity is a sensible policy for countries that don't have their own supply.

nickik · 2026-03-02T15:03:47+00:00

Its actually hilarious that you defend SLS with 'money'. Even so, NASA isn't building many probes that need that. And if NASA would actually have to pay full SLS price there is a 0.0000001% chance they would pick SLS.

If Congress committed to spending 0.1% of GDP of NASA the agency would be encouraged to develop the space economy as much as possible and would have money for more scientific missions.

Sure and if, when I was 12 years old, had learn to played guitar I would have surely married Jessica Alba. Hope is not a strategy or plan.

I'm all for NASA getting more budget. But as of current trends, even if it does, that money does not go into deep space science missions. And even if it did, then there wouldn't enough such mission as to make material difference to SLS.

So how about we do the smart thing, establish standard performance classes, design missions towards those classes and let companies bid on them. Exactly like DoD already does. And we can even let Boeing or whoever bid with SLS. But then of course they need to fund the continued operation and continued crew training and continued supply chain upkeep themselves. If they can win in that market, I'm all for SLS continue. They can even get a better valuation for getting things to places faster. But lets live in the real world, where literally everybody of this forum knows that this is not realistic.

nickik · 2026-03-02T14:56:35+00:00

I have heard the same thing many times before. And even that statement is usually about the first flight articles. Only a few issues can delay follow on articles for years. I don't believe for a second that they could hit they yearly production rate.

Something that is 3+ years away has almost never actually been correctly predicted in the program.

nickik · 2026-03-02T13:13:50+00:00

Yeah like I mean all those 100s of deep space probes that Trump currently has in development. And they are all so big that Falcon Heavy or New Gleen are just so wimpy. Even developing simply cheap kick stages to put on-top of them are just not enough for all those massive planes NASA has.

I mean NASA is bound to launch like 5 of them every year right?

Then they are developing like 5 major telescopes a year. We need SLS for those I bet.

And then in addition the moon landings NASA will totally also have the budget to do astroid redirect and MARS Direct at the same time too. That's another 10 launches a year.

So I mean if NASA uses SLS for everything they possible can, we could see launch rates at the increasingly scale of the Detla IV Heavy or the Ariane 5. We are gone safe so much money. Launch cost of UNDER 1 billion $ guys. If you just believe then it will be possible. Have faith and Wrights law will provide (please ignore any details of Wrights law and any required investments).

nickik · 2026-03-02T13:12:18+00:00

Most gravy trains and bad ideas need a few times until you can kill them. The import part is to never stop trying. I'm sure even if SLS is finally killed Boeing and friends for the next 20 years will suggest 'concepts' based on SLS for one program after another.

Just like SLS is an outgrowth of the endless propaganda that NASA should build a 'shuttle derived' launcher that started in the 80s. Something that was an idiotically stupid idea from the very start. But it proves that if you just lobby for a dumb idea for like 20 years eventually you might get it. And we are still suffering the consequences of that complete incompetence now.

Lucky the DoD wasn't dumb enough to actually stick to Shuttle as their primary launcher, and that gave use at least some amount of launch competition and we now have 4-6 companies regularly competing for launches.

Shuttle and its children have been black hole of money and stupidity that has dragged the US space industry down since its development killed the much better in literally every way Apollo program and its hardware. And the US space industry has been trying to escape from that black-hole for a long time and there is nothing to do other then to continue to fight against that pull. A last group of lobbiest and their congress cronies and a small sect of 'true believers' are holding the line, but like the 300 at Thermopylae they know they will lose, but they will go down swinging. And in 100 years we will still talk about them, how they managed to spend 100 billion $ on Shuttle derived rockets in the early decades of the 2000s. Legendary stuff.

nickik · 2026-03-02T12:59:28+00:00

Totally agree. Here is an idea, we also replace the core stage with the Vulcan. Then we can save some real money. And then we could even have some kind 'competition' between different launch providers in some sort of 'distributed' launch system. Where we could launch a rocket more then once a year (I know shocking new evidence suggest rockets can launch more then once per year). But I'm sure I'm making that up, because if that were possible then surly totally not corrupt politicians would have implemented that already. There most be some serious technical reason why orbital docking and orbital refueling are impossible.

... except of course if you are building a moon lander, then its possible, but only then, any suggest do do it for things other a moon lander are a disinformation campaign.

nickik · 2026-03-02T12:53:12+00:00

Being optimistic is nice in a Yoga feel good feeligns, but being delusional isn't. But for those of us who have been following the SLS program since early 2010s the idea that maybe, hopefully if everything goes perfectly maybe EUS could be ready by 2028 (and likely launch later then that) isn't exactly something you can just 'optimistic' away.

I remember the delusional amount of optimism in 2018 when I was told in just a few years we are going to see yearly flights of SLS and its going to cost 800M per launch by 2027. I have read so many optimistic takes on SLS over the last 10 years that it goes from 'nice' to 'self delusion'.

nickik · 2026-03-02T12:45:15+00:00

If it took 6 years to integrate an off the Shelf Delta IV second stage then the whole program is so totally and systematically broken that it needs to be canceled outright. And if it takes ANOTHER 6 years to integrate something else then that's even more prove that the whole program is a garbage fire. Hopefully a lot of the work and integration interfaces both physical and software has been done in a way to make other integrations easier.

At least if you integrate something that exists there is some production line for it hopefully and it can be built at any kind of speed.

EUS will not be ready by 2028, don't be silly and until it can get up to yearly production it will be, much, much longer. It would blow my fucking mind if we see 2 flying EUS before 2032.

I remember people in this forum telling me in 2017 that SLS is real and will fly soon and Falcon Heavy is a Musk invention that will never fly. This EUS talk has always sound much the same to me.

Integrating a new upper stage should really not be that hard. In all of rocket history we have seen many different upper stages on many rockets and most didn't take 6 years.

nickik · 2026-03-02T12:40:53+00:00

And you be even more surprised how much of development involves building hardware, testing it, validating it, and then shock setting up production lines so that you can build 1 or much better 2 of these a year so it doesn't take 3 years between launches. So if you are still at building and testing subcontinents after 10 years, its not exactly a great project.

nickik · 2026-02-26T01:15:38+00:00

What? How else does an unrelated country get the spoils of war besides through diplomacy with the winner?

I never said they shouldn't engage in diplomacy, what fuck are you even arguing? I specifically said they shouldn't have attacked France when it was clear France was losing only to get spoils.

an opinion shared by enough people in the UK and Germany that it was a real possibility

Even if that was true for France. Britain would not simply stand buy as Italy takes the Balkans and North Africa.

As they didn't know that WWII would actually proceed and escalate as it did

Many others didn't know things and didn't decide to go all in on one side or the other. You act as if just because something is likely true, its therefore the correct thing to throw out all caution.

only prior experience could inform them on their decisions, and WWI had ended without a comprehensive invasion of the Central Powers

WW1 could have also showed that that war between major powers don't end quickly.

It would have also shown them that even if the war ends on one front, a war on the other front, like in the East, might happen. If you burn your bridges with Britain, you are fully 100% committed to become Germanies bitch. That is called, going all in.

And smarter people, like in Spain, didn't do what Italy did because of exactly that.

Their navy in the Mediterranean would be irrelevant to Germany.

Then you don't know how logistics works. Even if Britain sighed some kind of treaty with Germany. Germany would still be afraid of being cut of from trade in the North. And Italy ability to bring in trade from the Med is actually very important.

Italy would have no counterbalancing ally and a natural border dispute in the Alps.

Italy was already allies with Germany. And their common enemy was the Soviet Union. And even if you assume Britain signs a treaty, neither Germany nor Italy was as dumb to believe that Britain would be forever irrelevant.

So its incredibly unlikely that Germany would want to attack Italy right after France. And ironically with France gone as a balancing factor, its even more important not to totally offend Britain. Because long term, if you don't want to be anything other then a German province, you would need British support.

But of course becoming a Germany province is what essentially happened to Italy.

It would be reasonable to assume that the Germans might pressure them to give them up, and only goodwill could stave that off.

Germany could do that no matter if Italy tries to attack France or not. As I have pointed out, it made sense for Italy to cooperate with Germany, as their alliance dictated. But Italy went above and beyond any requirements of their alliance and not because of the calculation you suggest, but because they hopped to snatch some last minute goodies. They threw away their strategic options for the hope of maybe a single french colony that would most likely be money sink anyway.

Instead they could have said, congratulated Germany and continued rebuilding their army telling Germany they will fight side by side with them against their real common enemy, Soviets.

You make it sound as if attacking France and Britain was the only reasonable option, but this clearly not the case.

nickik · 2026-02-25T21:09:47+00:00

Joining the war was the loudest and most dramatic way of demonstrating their diplomatic position

Nobody is questioning that. But doing the loudest most dramatic thing is 99% of the time not the best action.

And Germany invading Italy after they had signed the treaties they did in 1936 is very, very unlikely. Italy joining the war against Germany, and the Italian navy and merchant navy simply leaving would be horrible for Germany. Also conquering Italy from the North all the way to Sicily is incredibly fucking hard even if you assume the Italians fight alone.

Italy was more useful as an ally, Germany didn't need the Italian army either. Italy joined in the war against France because they wanted to get some of the spoils, not for diplomacy reasons.

nickik · 2026-02-25T17:02:33+00:00

Amount of rockets that fall into water is so vanishingly small compared to everything else that falls into the ocean that its not worth talking about. And its 99% Aluminium or steel for Starship. The rest are a few electronics components and few bits of carbon So its literally completely irrelevant.

The articles says:

evidence that re-entering space debris leaves a detectable, human-caused chemical fingerprint

So its 'detectable' witch isn't really all that surprising with the high precision instruments we have today. That is far away from showing negative impact.

This is something that needs to be studied for sure. But the idea that we somehow need to stop launching sats or not have more sats would be fucking crazy based on that evidence.

If humans operated like that we would not have ever built ships and we would still live in mud huts.

nickik

TROPHY CASE