We learned our lesson in Iraq. Overthrow the government and things get better? We had more reason to attack that country than we did Iraq. They’ve been at war with us since ‘79. Why have we pulled our punches since then?
“We had more reason to attack that country than we did Iraq.”
The plan for going into Afghanistan was to destroy Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda escaped to the rest of the Middle East. The rest of the Middle East had no intention of helping the US destroy Al Qaeda. So, to give them an incentive the US needed to put an armored brigade in the Middle East that potentially threatened the countries Al Qaeda fled to, Iran, Syria, and a few others. You don’t need an armored force to pacify Fallujah. For that you need infantry. The fact that that threat was there forced those other countries to destroy Al Qaeda for us. The problem was we should have pulled out of Iraq then, but someone had the bright idea of turning Iraq into Wisconsin.
Attacking Iran, which had a population of over sixty million, would have been a much tougher nut. As for pulling punches, the US Navy wiped out the Iranian Navy in an afternoon. (We couldn’t do it as easily today because they adapted.)
The Al Qaeda of the Philippines or Shi Lanka are branding attempts. It isn’t the same organization. The plan worked. The problem comes in that we stayed in Iraq too long and when we left, we did it chaotically, kind of like the Biden administration left Afghanistan.