This wasn't written by me and is in reference to an argument between myself and a person from Europe and this is from a third person, so they may seem a little out of context but I thought it had some pretty cogent points in reference to war. This was in response to someone defending (at least partially) United States adventurism abroad:





"You don't really get the problem at all, likely because you don't have the mental capacity to. Yes Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, however the idea that U.S intervention was both done out of humanitarian motivations as well as the idea that the way we took out Saddam was well done, is bordering retardation.

Saddam saw groups like ISIS as a threat so in his brutality he kept them suppressed, despite us knowing this we invaded Iraq and took out Saddam with no viable replacement in leadership, this enabled ISIS to take power in Iraq. Our intervention in Iraq exacerbated the 'terrorist threat' which was minimal before, and that's why people accurately say it was U.S unilateral military intervention that created terrorism in the region in the form it is today, that is part of how the U.S destabilized the region.

Furthermore the notion that U.S intervention was entirely authoritarian is easily decimated by some basic statistics, our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan were not only a waste of resources and had catastrophic effects long term but resulted in actions which would make U.S foreign policy unarguably terroristic.
http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/iraqi
That link will show you a scientific study along with U.N statistics show as a result of direct violence caused by the U.S invasion at least 165,000 Iraqi civilians have been massacred. What would this make U.S foreign policy, terroristic. And by the way that is a minimum number, there is certainly more civilians killed as a result of our military adventurism and it also doesn't take into account Afghanistan in which much more civilians were slaughtered.

And you are a fool to believe the U.S is solely strategically bombing ISIS camps and this is good spending of U.S resources. The U.S spends more than 50% of our discretionary budget on military, why is this a good idea? This prevents investments in infrastructure. Yes I will admit most of federal spending is mandatory spending, but this primarily includes interest on debt (by the way due to interest on debt U.S will be spending $7 TRILLION on the Iraq war, already spent $1.7 TRILLION) which is really just a given, as well as programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. And these are earned beenfits programs anyway, they are really mostly funded by tax dollars so counting them entirely is intellectually dishonest. So counting discreationary spending we spend into the military in excess, more than roughly the next nine countries combined. (The number may have changed). Oh yeah and nearly all of the next 10 strongest militaries are our allies anyways. Britain, France, Japan, Brazil, Germany, South Korea, all among the top and all our allies. If we cut military spending by 50% even if you include the mandatory spending on military not just the discretionary spending, we would still have by far the strongest military in the world.

And furthermore why are we taking the terrorist threat into our own hands, when they do not pose a direct threat to the U.S. They are based in the Middle East and our primarily fighting there, us fighting there only makes us a larger target for terrorist attacks due to the heavy civilian casualties. We shouldnt be shipping our resources over seas for nation building and military intervention, and the 900 military bases we have stationed around the globe, when domestically we have crumbling infrastructure, high poverty rates, and could invest in labor market interventions so we could raise our minimum wage. And even then we waste so much of our money here on corporate welfare, pork barrel spending, and tax cuts in the name of deficit reduction which never comes to fruition.

And here is the cold truth about U.S Middle East intervention, it does not stop the problem. In the end we end up bombing innocent civilian in a waste of resources on what is not a direct domestic threat. While it is true the majority of terrorist convictions since 9/11 that came to the U.S did come from outside of U.S soil, that includes non violent convictions and acts not in U.S soil, so it is an intellectually dishonest comparison. Since we started the War on Terror, rates of terrorism are higher than what they were to begin with. With the onset of the drone wars and their increasing by Obama, and even more increasing now by Trump, (btw Trump has increased drone strikes by 432% already) when we kill civilians in the region we not only become massive human rights violators but we breed anti western sentiment in the region, this is the truth about U.S foreign policy, ISIS uses civilian casualties as a recruiting tool, and it works. Our foreign policy has proven that you can not just bomb ISIS into democracy, and you can not bomb them out of existence. We should allow countries like Jordan and United Arab Emirates to fight the problem in their region rather than taking it into our hands, because that has not worked. We should really stick to providing logistical support, intel, help to cut off radicalization online, cut off terrorist funding networks, and provide monetary and humanitarian support, and if we really want to fight the terrorist threat that should include moderate taking in of refugees. I think Bernie Sanders proposal of taking in 65,000 from Syria was reasonable, I am not saying take in 1 million as Germany has done approximately, don;t make a false dichotomy there, but 65,000 is sustainable. And it could also include helping with food supplies to allies in the region, as well as limited monetary support. This would also provide more resources to invest in all the problems we have domestically."