Bin Laden is dead. Great. Now, can we get all of our freedoms back and get the hell out of the middle east?

trzy. We are directly responsible for the theocracy in Iran. When those people burn our flags and celebrate when something horrible happens to the US, they have damn good reason to.
[/quote]

The US is partially responsible for creating the circumstances that ultimately led to that, but why don't you also blame the Iranians who actually installed the theocracy? Let's apply Occam's Razor and assign blame to the ones actually pulling the trigger. They could have re-installed a socialist or created a secular democracy, or even a military dictatorship, but instead they chose theocracy and that's not America's fault. The takeaway lessons from the overthrow of Mossadegh are: use regime change more sparingly, be careful of blowback, and, for nationalists around the world, don't steal the property of investors backed by more powerful governments than your own.

[quote name='frob' timestamp='1304367200' post='4805629']
Iraq = Started in 1990 with Iraq's Kuwait invasion, repulsion and ceasefire, decade of no-fly with a record of infractions. Followed up by UN inspection mandates requiring immediate and unconditional access to particular sites.

[quote name='Alpha_ProgDes' timestamp='1304367403' post='4805632']
Iraq invaded Kuwait because Kuwait was slant drilling in Iraq territory and wouldn't stop after Iraq repeated demands for Kuwait to stop.

Was it weaker than the false testimonies, propaganda and lies that led to the second Iraq invasion?

Opposing ideologies that Reagan and Carter directly funded and armed. So much for your so-called moral superiority.

Between supporting Muslim freedom fighters (USA) and stabbing former allies in the back, and then trying to construct a phony narrative of Western Crusaders murdering Muslims (Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and yourself), I'd say the USA clearly possesses moral superiority in what is obviously a very messy situation.

Score another one for the good guys! *fist pump*

That is true. Oil is messy.

But oil must flow. So ends justify the means.
[/quote]

Sort of. Involvement in the middle east ultimately boils down to oil and national interest (but then again, so does everyone's involvement anywhere). But reality is a bit more complex. America's benign imperialism is not solely motivated by predatory resource extraction. The US is not benefiting from OPEC manipulating oil prices or the Saudis bankrolling anti-American terrorists, now are we? So perhaps the narrative is more complex.

[quote name='Fiddler' timestamp='1304369332' post='4805646']
Was it weaker than the false testimonies, propaganda and lies that led to the second Iraq invasion?