Japan

Germany

South Korea

Every Western nation supported by the Marshall plan

You're right, but it goes both ways and not 100% one way or the other

Yeah, the USA did do some good for the world. 80 years ago.

But what it is doing today is a terrible, atrocious tragedy, and its far beyond the point where the means justify the ends.

I mean that as someone who follows closely the cost of American warfare, and as someone who refuses to ignore the human tragedy it is bringing to current generations of people who really, really do not deserve to have had their infrastructure utterly destroyed, their lives ruined, their children left in rubble, on a daily basis, because some smart American decided it had to be so.

The problem is, we wanted to do Iraq and Afghanistan and get out. If we had done a Marshall Plan in Iraq, we would have had maybe 100,000 troops there for a decade, but it would have been stable when we left.

The problem is, you thought it was acceptable to be there in the first place.

Fuck, its 2017, are we really still explaining this? Of course we are. We must.

> we would have had maybe 100,000 troops there for a decade

The US has had north of 100k troops in Iraq for 7 years, then about 50k for 3 more years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_troop_surge_of_2007#/...

The U.S. doesn't leave. Pretty much any where we send troops, we tend to set up bases there and remain indefinitely.

Just look at Germany, Japan, Korea, Iraq, ...