raq is the poster child for the most effective use of military force to a achieve a political objective, regime change, in the history of warfare. The mess after “Mission Accomplished” is the poster child for failure on every other non military foreign engagement metric
Once the professionals had done their job and the politicians took over.
Taiwan is indeed a stepping stone - China has time on its side (literally all the time in the world) will not let it go and only has to be lucky once.