First of all, you’ve responded apparently to the first of my sentences, and pretended the other two don’t exist, so I’m not feeling too optimistic about your good faith in this conversation. But ok.
There is a vast difference between a local authoritarian government intending to control the local populace, and a neoliberal government from far away that just wants to destabilize your region, increase oil profits for transnational corporations, and funnel a fortune into arms dealers. Our boondoggle in the Middle East was only a boondoggle if the goal was the one stated, which, I suspect you are smart enough to know, it wasn’t. The actual goals were very much accomplished, and the local resistance was a key part of that - how else could they justify all that spending?
First of all, you’ve responded apparently to the first of my sentences, and pretended the other two don’t exist, so I’m not feeling too optimistic about your good faith in this conversation. But ok.
There is a vast difference between a local authoritarian government intending to control the local populace, and a neoliberal government from far away that just wants to destabilize your region, increase oil profits for transnational corporations, and funnel a fortune into arms dealers. Our boondoggle in the Middle East was only a boondoggle if the goal was the one stated, which, I suspect you are smart enough to know, it wasn’t. The actual goals were very much accomplished, and the local resistance was a key part of that - how else could they justify all that spending?