Has anything we or our allies ever done to intervene in Middle Eastern conflicts/sovereignty/politics turned out okay? Short term victories always turn into long term quagmires of the unintended consequences kind. When it goes south it’s always completely unforeseeable, except for those who predicted it.

Granted, we were only ever there because oil (starting with FDR), and then Israel, but then we started to take sides in internal matters, interfere with the process, depose democratically elected leaders and generally get up to our friggin’ necks in blood, blame and bitterness. When you start picking one brutal dictatorship over another brutal dictatorship (or even playing both against each other) it’s time to go home and sober up.

Would be great if the average American had the slightest understanding of our history over there and why they (1) hate us or (2) mistrust us or (3) like us just fine, but want us out of their beeziness.

It’s the most ridiculously complex geopolitical area on Earth.  And no matter what we do we are toxic. Like with the mutual assured destruction and the tic tac toe playing computer in “Wargames” when do we figure out the only answer is to not play the game?

The House always wins, and in the Middle East the House is chaos.