i've seen this sentiment echoed lately and it seems patently absurd, US presence in iraq and afghanistan was massively unpopular by the middle of the bush administration; it took another 14 years for us to leave. it seems like foreign policy is still trapped within the fallacies of Giulio Douhet and Curtis Lemay, simply replacing firebombing with starvation. not to mention that the economic devastation and looting of the 90s was how we ended up with Putin today.