Bulgaria just says No!

Well, Afghanistan actually did have the people rather proud to have done the deed....at the behest of some in our Government (as some may believe), or just because they were terrorist scumbags who considered killing civilians a perfectly fair thing to do? Either way...I still, to this day, have no problem with having hit Afghanistan. My issue is that it never needed to be a full war, and some minor troop movements in Nov/Dec of 2001 would have ended it before it ever began. 

Iraq was Baby Bush making Daddy Bush proud of him (perhaps a rare thing, given Baby's general "accomplishments" before President).

Libya just pissed us off with their demand to 'hold the gold', and who knows? Maybe another nation like Germany demanded their gold, privately? It really COULD come down to something that simple, I fear. Qadaffi was the kooky goofball (at least fairly harmless since Reagan spanked him) that would be the easy cash-out option for central banks to invent gold they may well not have anymore. Then again....Obama and Clinton may VERY well have simply had delusions of grandeur in believing they could reshape the region 'their way', before finding out that term means nothing in the local language?

I think each has had its reasons, and of course...defense contractors going at it. Although they really aren't the drive anymore. They've dropped well back from the boom budgets of the war years (and their profits exceeded oil companies, at least one year I'd looked at for a past story).

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Now, were those countries better off? yeah.. sadly.. To a one, they had better standards and quality of life before the US ever touched them. Afghanistan WAS an exception...but the Taliban are rather busy lately....retaking what they see as theirs. Poor locals won't fare well..but then, honestly, nation-building NEVER should have even been on the task list, IMO. Just bloody removal of about a half dozen named men. Most of which ARE dead now.

The others tho? Libya fell apart and helps no one now, as something just a bit better organized than Somalia. Iraq is barely holding what they have in national Government with pressure within a short drive of the Capital city and from 2 directions. Ouch there...and so so much for absolutely nothing. 

Syria? That is a story without the last chapter yet. It may yet turn out okay in the end. I'm afraid Putin will have more to do with making that happen than we do tho. If the US takes Damascus in the end? I fear we may as well hand it back to the radicals, and save everyone the trouble of time and fighting before the same thing happens in the end anyway