Hardly any losses except for the violent deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis over a decade.

Iraq was a disaster for the USA and created an insurmountable amount of debt.

A wouldn’t say the Iraq finished in “a few weeks.” They knew if they just left it would go back to the same business as usual. So the USA stayed for years playing Sim City. Trillions of dollars all said and done doesn’t seem like a win. These proxy’s are just that, proxies, because foreign policy on a grander scale is harder to accomplish like with China or Russia. USA won one proxy in the region but it’s more akin to winning the battle not the war. Iran is showing this as I type.

> This also secured Israel’s long term prospects in the region, which seems to be one of the most sacred directives of American policy.

Not really—it massively increased Iran's influence in the area, which is why in 2007 they had to panic, reverse course, and start backing al-Qaeda again ("the redirection").

>They've never witnessed functioning policy on any front. Bin Laden wanted to destroy America, and he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

This is revisionism. The agenda of al-Qaeda was to establish a caliphate. The whole "al‑Qaeda Plot to Just Sit Back and Enjoy Collapse of United States" meme was just a pivot after they got pummeled by the US army, after 9/11. That's not to say the US won, but the US losing isn't the same as al‑Qaeda winning.

>al-Qaeda[a] is a pan-Islamist militant organization led by Sunni Islamist jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic caliphate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda

American politics has often been about pitting one group against another. Convincing them that others are benefiting at their expense, or that they will in the future.

If you think democratic party is any less corrupt than republican, you are already biased

Maybe it's just the closest thing to being a rebel (as in going against popular opinion) these days.

My perpetual reminder that this "healthy America" never existed. As far as generations go Millennials have it easier than the Vietnam, WWII, and WWI/Great Depression generations.

Can you say anything specific? If you're going to criticize policy, there are many specific things you can say. 'Keeps China down' is not only incorrect, but meaningless itself.

As I look back to after the Kuwait defense, the attack on Iraq and forward stopped making sense because US leadership didn't explain the rationale. Politicians didn't want to get caught up in the problematic history of dealing with Iraq and Iran, so the US charged in and pushed out Iraq under the flag of supporting an ally (the US was really serving Saudi Arabia and punishing Saddam). There was an expectation that Iraq's military over-investment would have kept them in economic check for some time.

After 9-11 it became obvious that there was a political and economic gold-rush opportunity under Cheney (who was the brains of the Bush admin). The US constructed Operation Iraqi Freedom to finally eliminate the uncontrollable and brutal Saddam family, while satisfying the needs of various parties (eg SA, Israel, Iran, Kuwait). Again the US population got a different narrative and there were no political consequences.

This trend of ignoring what the US populace needs to know, doing whatever benefits those that are in power, then constructing a fake narrative continues. The names are different, but the policy is non-existent. The difference in the Trump Administration is that the constructions challenge reality or simply don't exist. The political consequences have been the same. None[1].

Maybe it's always been this way.

[1] The primary driver of political consequence in the US seems to be economics, because that's a consequence that's measurable and cannot be rationalized as a patriotic good for some imagined future state of the world.

I’m not sure about the Biden cooperating with Al Qaeda thing (perhaps you mean not intervening when HTS took over? Biden was backing the Kurds at the time) but it was Trump who did a deal with the Taliban re Afghanistan.

The post war Republican Party had been all about building alliances and being nice to allies! The current Republican Party is so different and distant from the stances of the party just 20 years ago.