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The cost/benefit ratio isn't anywhere close to being in our favor.
Democracy is overrated. There's no guarantee -- far from it -- that democratic process necessarily yields results amenable to us. Our insistence on open elections in the PA, over Israel's objections, propelled Hamas to power in Gaza. Were the experiment repeated in Egypt, we might get the Muslim Brotherhood. Domino theory didn't hold in SE Asia after we pulled out, and doesn't appear to be working in the ME, even though we knocked Iraq down.
There's a pretty good argument to be made that in terms of realpolitik, that we not only removed the main regional counterweight to Iran, but increased their influence inside Iraq (and hence regionally) dramatically.
Depends on what you mean by running better.
What do you mean by running better? The torture salons and death squads have reopened under new management, sectarian tensions are rife, crime is rampant, delivery of electricity and clean water has yet to reach prewar levels, the country faces the prospect of war over Kurdish secession and the two major parties, SCIRI and DAWA, have historical ties to Iran.
We've already lost. We just don't realize it yet. There's a better way to manage the problem. We need to GTFO. Same goes for Afghanistan.
The cost/benefit ratio isn't anywhere close to being in our favor.
I saw it recently. We are close to it and at a rate that will put us in the highest debt ratio in history. A very dangerous thing considering at least in WWII, most of this money was supporting factory workers in the USA, not deadbeat people and deadbeat businesses.
CG posted the graphs upstream.
Yep, same shape I saw before. Like I said, and with projected deficits, it will exceed WWII debt.
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