Much as I would love to blame it all on Obola, the fact is it was stupid to even engage in Deseret Shield. EVERYONE gets brutalized who interferes in that rathole area of Earth. Bush1 was dumb enough to get involved and things have only been a series of disasters ever since. No matter what we do it will somehow get torn apart by the eternal local hatreds.
I didn’t have a problem with Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Go in, kick butt, get out.
Going into Iraq in 2002, I thought from the get-go, was motivated by a desire to take care of daddy’s unfinished business. It was a mistake to stay there.
Going into Afghanistan, initially, was not a mistake. We should have gone in, killed a bunch of very bad people, made a nice pile of skulls as a warning to the rest, and then LEFT. NONE of them should have seen Gitmo; any useful information should have been “extracted” on the spot, and then shoot the bastards. Again, it was a mistake to stay.
These people are tribal. They are foreign to the concept of representative national government. They have been that way for literally thousands of years. To imagine that we could rewrite that is the height of arrogance. Sadly, in this modern era we are putting nuclear weaponry in the hands of mad tribal chieftains. The results could be globally fatal.
It goes back further. Clinton got involved with the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Back then, many predicted it would lead to out-of-control Muslim radicalization there and in other areas.
Sad thing is, I don't hear any potential US presidents getting the foreign affairs situation right.