> I'm surprised no lesson the US learnt from similar overthrows in the past, but again this is Trump.

Its not Trump, its the US.

Someone always comes along trying to attack/occupy a country. Making big promises. Years later when nothing is achieved. Someone else will come along talking about how much US is spending, taxpayers dollars being lost, failures etc.

In recent example, Afghanistan and Trump come to mind. Everyone talked about how Afghanistan was a waste of taxpayer dollars. But now here we are.

The only thing which I can say specifically about Trump is that I wouldn't be surprised if the flip towards "Venezuela was a waste of taxpayer money" happens during his administration and he comes out saying "I have never heard of Maduro".

I wasn't even thinking about the drugs. Is that a real thing? North Korean nuke isn't a real concern.

Iraq had no goal. The stated reason was WMDs and 9/11, so bogus and unrelated. Stability wasn't our concern either, I mean we funded Saddam Hussein to begin with. US companies did set up oil drilling, but I really don't think the driving motivation was oil, otherwise we'd have gone to Venezuela first.

You think our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan was not related to oil?

Afghanistan has no oil. Iraq does, but the US showed no interest in taking it for decades. It was most likely pushed by our "greatest ally" there who also has no oil.

The Kurds are our greatest ally in Iraq and they most definitely have lots of oil in addition to letting US operate on their territory in exchange for protecting the oil interests. I suppose you could say that's not us taking the oil but we still get value like we had taken the oil and provided fair market rate to host bases in exchange.

Saddam was already selling the oil at fair market rate.

I said fair market rate to host bases. Saddam was definitely not leasing us military at fair market rate in Iraq (or Syria for that matter, where Kurds also host US base).

I see that now. Sorry for my sloppy reading.

I highly suggest you look into the Afghan pipeline project.

I know about this one, it's eh. There are pipelines everywhere and no smoking gun.

The point is that there are certainly oil interests in Afghanistan. To act like there aren’t is inaccurate.

Ok, to put it this way, we'd have gone into Afghanistan with or without the possibility of a pipeline.

Oh also they didn't even set up that pipeline during all the time we were there

Let's not sacrifice anymore Americans in the name of freedom, but the number was substantially fewer than 10,000, not anywhere close to 150,000. Perhaps that many Iraqis died, or maybe even more.

“ How about not going there at all for whatever reason, under any circumstances.”

What moral and ethical system brings you this supposition?

>Are we still in the spirit of sacrificing 150,000 American soldiers in the name of freedom, like we did in Iraq?

What are you talking about? Even Vietnam only had a third of that many casualties. Who told you this bullshit? ChatGPT?

> Cuba is a disaster and it has so much untapped real estate and vacation potential.

Is this sarcasm, or are you just a horrible human being?

> then fix Mexico

Do you mean kidnap the president, stage a coup, bomb it, impose a blockade, or did you have something else in mind?

> When we kicked out Russians from Middle East we were not aware they kept islam jihadists at bay, then Al Quaida came to live and we all now how it ended.

I thought the US was well aware of this, since the US was funding the Mujahideen at the time?