Wars the US waged in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan following September 11, 2001 caused at least 4.5 million deaths and displaced 38 to 60 million people, with 7.6 million children starving today, according to studies by Brown University.
Inevitably with the passage of time you move on to other topics and while this is happening you focus on narrower more specific effects. But this is so damn infuriating because it’s exactly what EVERYBODY SAID WOULD HAPPEN. Early 2000s when these American wars of adventure started you had people saying this would be destabilising, encourage the very terror supposedly being fought against, cost the US themselves mountains of treasure, degrade their reputation and put them on a path of decline. In the lead up to Iraq many warned that this would be destabilising for the whole world as well as the nation of Iraq itself, that it would make things more dangerous globally, create power vacuums and breed generations of resentment and hatred and it clearly has. This is not to even mention on top of it all, the absolute monumental human tragedy it has wrought. This was stupid, stupid, stupid decision making.
Sorry, can’t hear you over the sound of all this cheap oil, I mean, freedom! Bringing freedom to these rich oil, I mean freedom starved countries! - 'murica in the 2000s
Thing is, the USA has been pulling this kind of shit for a long time. The Kingdom of Hawaii being overthrown is a very good and old example, dating back to 1893 for the coup and 1898 for the incorporation. The Philippines being denied their independence for almost 50 years after the Spanish sold them out in 1898 is another example. The USA is an unrepenting reoffender when it comes to fucking other countries.
Relevant Onion article
And it was less “stumbling into iraq cause we have no clue what we’re doing” and more “If Halliburton and Raytheon make enough money off of all this they’ll donate enough to my staffers and I that we can all customize our cadillacs” (I recommend season 1 of the podcast Blowback if you wanna take a deeper dive)