"Fueled by a post-Cold War fantasy of ruling the world, a resentment of Arab states that would not obey the US, and devotion to the interests of the State of Israel, the Bush Administration also seized upon 9/11 as an excuse to begin a string of endless wars in the Middle East. These wars, too, could have brought the country together and created a new consensus--if they could have been successful. Broad strategic problems, however,. doomed them almost from the start. Overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq was well within our capabilities, but establishing stable, friendly regimes in those countries--much less democracies--was far beyond them. Sixteen years and many trillions of dollars later, our side is losing the war in Afghanistan, while the sectarian Iraqi government is destroying the country's second-largest city, Mosul, in order to save it. But that was not all. The fantasy behind those wars: that we could solve terrorism, and other problems as well, by replacing Middle Eastern autocrats with democracies, has continued to be a principle of our foreign policy ever since, with increasingly disastrous consequences." DK
"These wars, too, could have brought the country together and created a new consensus--if they could have been successful."
I don't think that this is true. I doubt that wars, even those which have commonly been touted as bringing a nation together, for us WWI and WWII are the classic examples, actually themselves did this.
They did also a lot of other things, simultaneously, and after, which, over time, cut very strongly against domestic social integration, and resulted in an American led globalization which frankly could care less about American domestic social integration.
It is also openly anti Western Civilization oriented, so we are a longstanding pariah within Western civilization itself as well.
Vietnam, similarly, was both very socially divisive for us while it was happening, unlike WWI and WWII, but much more importantly, disastrous for us, as they too were, in the long run, in a global hegemonic sense, in terms of their tendency to distract, and to enrich and empower so called allies in Asia, encouraging Americans to think, to this very day, that blindly booming noncommunists, both ideologically and for short term profits, was somehow good for America in the long run.
Korea had some very similar tendencies too.
Places where proxy wars like this have been fought have of course since ancient times been turned into wastelands.
FDR wanted to render Germany and in fact most of Central Europe, in general, pasturage, after WWII, until sense was talked into him, and into his successors.
England, before us, had long mostly been the same way, also throwing France into the mix of throw away buffer areas between Britain and Russia, its natural ally.
Places where proxy wars like this have been fought have of course since ancient times been turned into wastelands.
FDR wanted to render Germany and in fact most of Central Europe, in general, pasturage, after WWII, until sense was talked into him, and into his successors.
England, before us, had long mostly been the same way, also throwing France into the mix of throw away buffer areas between Britain and Russia, its natural ally.
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