Paul was ridiculed by Republicans...he was right of course.. http://teapartyeconomist.com/2014/06/12/iraq-chaos-total-defeat-bushs-policies-course/
I would have appreciated that more if it had made even a modest attempt at being civil, let alone unbiased...
also... every history and sociology professor on earth were saying the same things pretty much since the beginning of any of it. paul isn't having some kind of epiphany that nobody else had. i remember having this discussion with one of my grad professors in 2006 who was persian, about how come europe can go to total shit and bounce right back, be civil, and move on after war. even after admitting total defeat and giving in (like Germany). we got into a long long discussion about how the basis for democracy was already deeply rooted in those european countries, so its easy for them to return to a structured continuation of being even after a mess. they have parliments or congresses or fairly elected officials that serve this basis. virtually none of the middle east has this (besides ones we've recently tried to force). they also have a lot of conflicts over ethnic grounds, where the name of the country or its flag hold little sway at all to your allegiances. OR, the countries hate each other or band together with each other BECAUSE of those ethnic groupings. most of the countries besides lebanon have a vast majority of one group, then tiny bits of the others. when push comes to shove, they side with their brothers in religion and ethnicity. you see it clear as day with Syria right now, and Iraq after the war. what starts as an uprising against assad is actually now just a sunni rebel vs. shia/alawite government ethnic war. and those conflicts like sunni, shia, kurds, etc... have been happening for decades or centuries, so its deeply engrained. AND, it leads to swings back and forth as power changes hands instead of a nice and even representation of all populations. you can't just go in and think you're gonna brush all of that aside. neocons definitely either A) were oblivious to all of those factors, or B) ignored anyone in the intelligence community trying to tell them otherwise in pursuit of their own agendas. it was msiguided from the start, but rich whitey doesn't wanna listen to all that psycho-mumble-jumble, he wants to bring bald eagles, and McDonalds, and country music, and "freedom" to the unenlighted brown peoples of the world...
That war, and most others, had nothing to do with ideals. It had to do with profit, pure and simple. The children of the lower and lower/middle class go off to fight and die so rich old white men can inflate their bottom lines.
some. more so us, or western nations, than a lot of other places. i'd beg to differ and say a lot of african conflicts are about resources... either ones that money can be made off of or ones needed to survive, guised in the veil of religious or ethnic conflict. notice how a serve drought will make a war pop up out of nowhere between two opposing tribes. then it becomes a land grab. but there's no denying that much of the war right now in the ME is idiological in nature. sunnis banding together, shias banding together. of course people want the money that comes with conquering a territory, but when you're fighting from religious ideals, or two groups of people that have hated each other for 200 years, the strength and resolve of that trumps any monetary motivation ever. if you see yourself as just and pure, and the opposition as making a mockery of your faith and your core values, that's something unique
