Lessons learned: We were safer under bush because he really did have al qaida on the run and without money to finance their terrorism. That leaving Iraq created a void that terrorist filled just like bush warned and the military predicted. And that IED's in the ME are preferable to IED's in America. BTW if you take the subways in NYC, they're the planned target for terrorist IED's.
I always appreciate your sense of humor, like the post above.
"Safer under Bush". Wowee Skipper. Um, just to remind you it was Bush ignoring warnings that bought us 9/11 the greatest act of terrorism in our history. And it has been under Obama that zero acts of terrorism have happened on our soil. And safer under bush got hundreds of thousand of Iraqi's killed, millions displaced and nearly 5,000 of our young men and women dead.
Personally, I didn't spent much time or effort considering why we went to Afghanistan (seemed like a no brainer after we were attacked), but I did spent a ton of both considering why we went to Iraq (my support was largely conditioned on the fact it did not appear to me that there was a better solution at the time to what was a legitimate threat). I did support both wars and still believe both were justified in the sense we had sound reasons. But I no longer believe either were prudent, in part because of regional and global realities and in part because of US war policy realities (which includes political infighting, public sentiment, and economic realities). In short, I really did believe we would execute them differently per the lessons of Viet Nam...but we did not. We have also spent a shit ton on homeland security which to me looks a lot like citizens losing civil rights while our borders are leaking like a sieve which includes those from ME hotspots, AS homegrown terrorists are traveling freely from here to Syria and back.