JPR, since the Korean and Viet Nam conflicts. Every single military conflict that the U.S. has been publicly and openly involved in. We caused some how.
If you look back in history. We either created the initial issue or helped create the environment for that conflict to germinate.
Either on purpose or by accident every conflict we end up in. You can bet a group of greasy politicians stuck their nose in a decade or two before and created the issue.
Unfortunately it’s not just wars these corrupt incompetent people start. The same arrogant, smartest people in the room also created the housing bubble and collapse by forcing banks to loan money to people that could never pay it back.
Then the banks were left holding the bag. So rolled them into a product they could sell off. Which created the collapse. And Barney Frank then blamed the banks for the collapse.
One decade Iran is our freind. The next we help Saddam Hussain because he will fight Iran for us.
We fund the Muj against Russia then two decades later are killing them.
Who are the corrupt, money grubers backing right now that will be our enemy next. And how did Ukraine become the latest proxy war. It’s easy to find out if you don’t listen to the news and believe it.
20 years from now we will be enemies with Ukraine. Bank on it.
These war mongers seem to pop up in every regime. Democrat and republican alike.
I will respectfully disagree with those assertions, particularly the conclusions. Hopefully this will also address
@jpr9954 's observations as well.
The United States, since World War II has maintained a remarkably constant foreign policy - regardless of the administration.
For several generations our prosperity was based upon agrarian and mercantile wealth. Even then, the former was dependent upon the later. It was so much so, thanks to the Britain's Continental System blockading most of Europe during the Napoleonic Wars, we found ourselves at war with the world's most powerful maritime power in 1812. Impressment, was an aggravation, but limiting access to international trading partners was a real threat.
Over time, the foundation of our prosperity also came to include the resources associated with power - primarily oil and natural gas. They too, however, were and are dependent upon free access to international markets. It is also important to realize throughout most of that period we were not independent of petroleum products from abroad and virtually all of our Western allies, who represent such huge part of our mercantile prosperity, were and are far more dependent than we.
The rise of the Soviet Union, empowered by its victory over Hitler in WWII and its vast standing army presented a challenge that the West really had not experienced since the seventh century and the explosion of Islam into southern and central Europe. In this case, rather than a religious movement, the West was faced with a political and economic ideology that represented the antithesis of capitalism, and by its very nature an existential threat to the economic and political construct that had enabled American prosperity for two centuries. The threat posed by Soviet power in Europe and the emerging Communist dictatorship in China directly threatened the international economic system (long before terms like "New World Order" or "Globalism" came into vogue) that powered every aspect of Western growth and development.
In the clarity of hindsight, historians like to scoff at things like the "domino theory," but those fears were very real at the time. I would also argue no historian, revisionist or not, knows the actual outcome for Japan or Southeast Asia had South Korea and Vietnam quickly collapsed.
Afghanistan in the 80's was an opportunity to both economically injure our primary rival, but more importantly, divert attention and resources away from areas of more critical national interest such as the Levant and the Persian Gulf. Did that war provide an opportunity for radical Islamic leaders like Osama bin Laden to develop? Regrettably yes, but every action of a great power has unintended consequences that have nothing to do with the correctness of the original strategy's intent.
You will note nothing here I have cited has anything to do directly with banks or corporations.
To allege that the US, beyond its simple existence, had anything to do with 9-11 is to enter the world of conspiracy advocates and Hamas apologists. Following that attack, we had no choice but to eradicate Al Qaida. My only regret, because we missed bin Laden in Torah Borah, is that we didn't simply leave Afghanistan after 24 months and after exterminating as much of the terrorist organization as possible.
Iraq is more complex. As one of those in the Pentagon who advocated against the invasion, I can never-the-less make the argument that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that could have been used against the West. For instance, we now know the Khamisiyah burn pit in March of 1991 was used to destroy, however unwittingly, a meaningful quantity of Iraqi nerve agents.
That said, an Iraqi regime dependent upon the West and belligerent toward Iran would be extremely useful today. Again, such hindsight is remarkable in its clarity. Not unreasonably, it is an observation and an outcome that we continue to champion to this day. It is strategy to which bankers and corporate CEOs react, not instigate.
Still we likely could have maintained Southern Watch, and containment of Iraq indefinitely. Though whatever outcome would have resulted is also speculation based upon assumptions concerning Saddam Hussein's behavior.
If there are any "corrupt money grubbers" they are you and me. Not one single American, except perhaps a few idealistic tree huggers, is prepared to abandon his prosperity or his way of life. Frankly, neither are our allies, however strident their youth, who depend upon the stability created by American armaments and our ability and willingness to use them.
Russia, and its goals in Ukraine, represent a direct threat to undermining that stability.
