The deep state operatives that were responsible for the Iraq War are just as bad as any dictator.
I don’t think most people in Australia are really paying that much attention to what is happening in the US. And the fact remains that Australia needs the US and doesn’t really have any other real option. Our immediate neighbours are either even weaker than we are (New Zealand) or too culturally different to make a military alliance a viable option (Indonesia). The average Australian isn’t willing to incur the risk or cost of “going it alone” on national security. The UK is too far away to help us. The US is far away too, but the US retains an ability to project power globally which the UK has largely lost.
And if the polls are right, we are going to elect Dutton as our next PM, who even though he occasionally criticises Trump, on the whole is closer to Trump than our current government is.
Even my teenage kids hate the US now because of how Trump talks about Nato and that’s just because of how they talk in their War Thunder teams. Cozying up to Russia will do that for you. And they already didn’t respect the US because of how the government treats its own citizens.
It’s very hard to gain respect. It’s very easily lost.
In 2003 the USA invaded Iraq because the "intelligence community" made up claims about the existence of weapons of mass destruction, resulting in the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians and 4,700 coalition troops; and the rise of ISIS. You think Trump's actions in the past month are worse than that?