Hi readers. Nowhere in the modern world. Maybe nowhere in the history of the planet has a nation squandered such treasure and so many lives for absolutely nothing.
Nothing.
Iraq. I-freaking-rock. Invaded the damned place twice. Presidents of both parties sent men and women to waste away there, then left Iraq in chaos and ruin for the first set of armed fanatics to arrive. From all directions.
Hell, the French caused the Vietnam War and a lot of what’s happening in the Arab lands today in their incompetent dealings with their vanished empire, but they’d have to tip their hats to us on this. They only lost Algeria and Vietnam etc, and their own country to the Germans. And they did most of it with money from US taxpayers by pretending to have been an ally during WWII so’s we owed them money to rebuild.
But even with US money the French couldn’t get up there in the neighborhood of a billion dollars a day.
It took two Bushes, a Clinton, and this guy now to pull that off.
So now nobody knows where any of the borders are to Iraq, and the only people who probably won’t end up with a piece of it are the Israelis. Not for lack of wishing, threatening with nuclear weapons, and thumb sucking. Be assured.
US foreign policy use to make a certain amount of sense unless you viewed it from a distance. But I think we’ve finally reached the point where it ceased making any sense and nobody in his right mind would attempt to make sense of it.
That way lies madness.
Olde Jules
So Far From Heaven 
What we continue to forget, as we did in Viet Nam among other places, is that we are dealing with an entirely different mindset.
NOBODY in this country who has lived here there entire lives has had to live with the constant fear of a child walking up to them with a bomb wrapped around their young, tender bodies.
We don’t know what it is to face war every time we walk out our front door.
These folks have been in the midst of a vile, violent, no-hold-barred war for how many centuries?
Neither Bush nor Clinton nor Cheney nor Barry can expect to go over there, lay a little “democracy and self-rule” and “industrialization or capitalism” on them and have their problems disappear as soon as our teenagers and early-twenties heroes leave.
Or come back.
And – with all due respect to our noble and brave and dedicated veterans – it’s never been about “protecting our freedom”:
just our interests.
The day our freedom is really is at stake is the day we will just plain take care of things.
The time till then will be corporate cooperation and policies we have no idea exists
Peace out, bro’.
Harris
Hi Harris: There’s almost no limit to what the current generation of US citizens haven’t experienced compared to the general body of human experience worldwide, both in all history, and recent history. Humans tend to theink, or assume, what they’ve seen for themselves is the pantheon of what potentially might happen to them. If they’re lucky enough, as we US citizens born in WWII and afterward have mostly been, they won’t be shown the folly of their limited imaginations. Gracias, J
If it’s about modern America just Follow The Money.
Hi Rob. Thanks for coming by. If it’s about the 21st Century planet earth follow the money might be nearer the truth. Gracias, J
I just read that ‘we’ want to up our ante another half a billion dollars in the Syrian civil war. $500,000,000
What could go wrong investing half a billion dollars in a civil war in that part of the world?
I wonder it they can put that much cash in one airplane or will they need two?
Hi Rob. I’m thinking two planes, even if it only takes one for half a billion. Throw another half-billion on the second plane just in case they need walking around money and something left over for some drinks and women. Old Jules
What I find particularly frustrating is that no one offers a better solution.
In retrospect, we know it was error to abandon Afghanistan after they beat the Soviets, especially cutting funds for schools there, allowing the Islamic militant Wahabi money from Saudi Arabia to move in with madrassahs, killing education for women, and real education for everyone.
What should we do now?
In retrospect, our failure to fund the right parties in the Syrian civil war allowed ISIL to move in — but who are the right parties, and how could anyone tell?
In retrospect, deBathification of Iraq’s military was stupid. But who do we support now, to fix it?
Who has a better answer?
Hi Ed. Maybe it’s just a matter of lowering the common denominator for what constitutes ‘better’. And what yardstick it gets measured by. For instance, if it costs less and still does nothing it’s probably better, and the sliding scale of better intensifies and it gets nearer Zero dollars spent without doing anything. Same with people killed. If it does nothing but costs fewer lives it’s possible to quantify ‘better’ in such a way as to arrive at ‘best’ where it costs nothing, causes no loss of life, and does nothing. Gracias, J