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I watched it happen. I lived through it happening. The GWOT drove me into the Blue Tribe for a decade, and I only returned when the existing Red establishment was driven out in turn. 2000s republican leaders now mostly vote democrat.
As for the destruction of America...
We don't have to appeal to theory when we can observe what actually happened. The GWOT burned the Reagan coalition to the ground and supercharged progressivism. Progressive overreach has, in turn, destroyed the nation. The Constitution is dead. Our system of government is pretty clearly dead. Tribal values are now mutually-incoherent and -intolerable, and the stress of tribal conflict is blowing out what institutions remain to us one after another. Reds and blues hate each other, wish to harm each other, and are gleefully seeking escalation to subjugate each other. This process takes time, but the arc is not ambiguous, and neither is where it leads. At some point in the next few years, it will be Blue Tribe's turn to wield federal power, and Red Tribe's turn to resist it, and at that point, if not sooner, things will get significantly worse. It is insanity at this point to think either that the tribes are going to coordinate a halt to the escalations, or that our society can survive another decade of accumulated escalations. The peace is not going to last.
As we have previously discussed, Libya also did not involve an invasion and occupation.
You appear to be assuming that the general population of Iran is some sort of generic huddled mass, yearning to breath free, that the problem is just the Mullahs and if we sweep the mullahs out of the way Iran magically transforms into Michigan. But Iran is not Michigan; at this point, even Michigan is not Michigan. Iran's current government are not alien space invaders, but rather Iranians who emerged from the population of Iran, and are thus at least somewhat representative of the sort of leadership that population produces. The Shah was an Iranian leader who operated torture dungeons. He was overthrown by Iranian Muslim communists(?), who... then also operated torture dungeons. Why do you believe that radical change in the government will produce a totally new sort of government, when it did not do so previously?
Your confidence that an intervention likely leads to a better situation for all involved is contradicted by recent experience, which you are dismissing out of hand. I have no reason to believe that "this time, it will be different", because it has not in fact been different any of the previous times. I do not care that the mobs are crying out for our aid; mobs cry out for lots of things when such appeals are obviously in their immediate interest, but that does not mean what they are crying out for today is a reliable indicator of their future preferences, and intervention has a grim track record.
I am not questioning whether we can bomb a second-tier power. I am questioning whether bombing will do any good, with the full knowledge that if I and people like me consent to bombing, and things go sideways, next we will be arguing over whether we should bomb them more, or maybe send just a few troops, and then just a few more. I note that the US and Israel "dominated a second-tier power" less than a year ago, and yet here you are, demanding we bomb them again. Did we not dominate them hard enough last time? If so, why are you claiming that this current domination will succeed where the previous domination failed?
Well I too lived through this era. I even lived in Iraq and Afghanistan for a spell.
I think you're granting a lot of explanatory power to the GWOT that it does not deserve whatsoever.
Trump as a singular individual and a Great Man of history is a major variable for sure. His critique of the GWOT was relevant to his popularity and MAGA, but it hasn't exactly informed his foreign policy decisions, as I already noted. He's clearly no isolationist.
But did the GWOT have much to do with immigration, the single biggest issue for Trump? (No, not it did not.)
The Great Awokening, for another significant factor, is not exactly closely tied to foreign policy at all.
The constitutional issues we have about domestic issues, like the expansion of the commerce clause, long precede the GWOT and have nothing to do with foreign policy. FDR and the Warren court have a lot of explanatory power here, not the GWOT.
In general, US domestic politics are pretty separate from foreign policy. Most voters list it pretty far down as their concerns go.
Iran is not Libya and Iranians are not Libyans, so that's a major set of differences.
The comparison I've used multiple times is actually an oil-rich Turkey. Maybe try that comparison and see how it feels.
A critical skill in life is evaluating appropriate analogies, not inappropriate ones. The intervention in Libya is at least in the right ballpark. (For example, someone else unironically brought up bombing in WWII for fuck's sake in evaluating the potential efficacy of a precision bombing campaign today.)
Last time, Trump went from tweeting about regime change to suddenly demanding a cessation of hostilities after merely 12 days. Don't confuse intensity of domination with the time length of domination. Had the Israeli air campaign continued, they were on track to hit certain key economic facilities in retaliation for Iranian targeting of Israeli domestic infrastructure. We would have at some point almost certainly seen civil unrest caused by economic deterioration months ago.
Last time we dominated them hard enough to put a major dent in their missile and nuclear programs, but did not aim at devastating domestic security forces and economic capacities. There was no active domestic opposition on the ground. As the months passed, Iran's economy deteriorated further without having lost major oil or commercial capacities to the IAF, and now there is major domestic opposition.
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