The policy of "staying out" which you deplore has never been tried. Your policy of constant micromangement of this hopeless screwed up region, by contrast, has been tried in spades and backfired repeatedly.
You're right, we'd be in much worse shape. Had we not used our enemies to fight each other into the dirt, all we'd have is a sea of strong enemies. Had we not influenced the actions of our enemies, they'd have been free to grow and prosper. As it is, we used the weak to fight the strong, and history seems to bear out that it worked pretty well.
Your policy of getting deeper into the quagmire (another American dead since your original "feel good" post) is a prescription of even more blowback and unintended consequences.
We are exactly where we need to be. A surgeon has to cut tissue to save the patient, so do we. The disease will not heal itself, so we had best cure it when and where we choose.
The policy of "staying out" which you deplore has never been tried.
Unless you're willing to unplug Hollywood, stop buying oil, and wait at home until Sharia is imposed, there is no way to avoid this fight. We've chosen our destiny, it involves technology, freedom, and democracy. The Islamists have choses theirs, it involves tradition, virtue, and submission to God. Our way of life threatens to destroy theirs, and before long, it will. They have no choice but to either stop going to their mosques, start buying Nikes, and wait at home until Sharia is deposed, or to fight back.
Let me be perfectly clear. What we are, in the comforts of our own home, will destroy everything they care about. Our ideas about government, women's rights, church and state, justice, and materialism infect their purity. Our very existence will destroy their culture, their social order, their heritage, their history. Until you understand that, your understanding of their motivations will be flawed.
Your policy of constant micromangement of this hopeless screwed up region, by contrast, has been tried in spades and backfired repeatedly. </>
It has because the Soviet Union was around as a counterbalance. What we did, they undid, and vice versa. Now, there is no one who can effectively block our plans. Think about it.