That the Saudis had the Bushes in their pockets can hardly be denied, but you've got the wrong war up there. You are referring to Desert Storm by Geo. H.W. Bush to protect Kuwait (and yes, Saudi Arabia) whereas I was talking about the second Iraq War with the mythical WMD. You make an interesting post about your idea that the female ambassador who gave Saddam bad info was actually a doublecross.......getting Iraq to aggress so we could more easily go in there to protect our oil supply. I don't know that I believe it, but it's a creative and interesting idea. Certainly a better excuse for war than the "WMD" that essentially NO one believed in except those kind of people who believe everything the government tells them.
Did I say I approve of starting wars with lies? I don't, but I don't approve of lots of things, like genocide or biowarfare or nuclear bombs or illegal immigration invasions, but it all happens anyway. I think we should look at the world as it is and not get too hung up on useless "oughta be's." Your last sentence is not useful because who knows how our nation will change? Split up into various territories is my best guess. No one can say it "will" do this or that. Reality does its own thing and is not constrained by the limited patterns of our minds.
You ask, "How long do you think the U.S. can survive conducting this kind of menacing foreign policy?" and IMO that's a good question and relates to a lot of strange stuff going on today. During the century of world wars just past Germany started aggressive wars twice with the explicit goal of ruling all Europe, including England. Japan started its world war after taking over much of China with extreme brutality. The whole developed world combined against these powers, as they would against rabid dogs or a wolf pack. And we learned from that right away: get allies in on wars so the world doesn't gang up against us and put us down. Even the Korean War was a "UN effort," ha-ha. Vietnam faked up a few allies, Australia notably. Serbia was "NATO" and so is Afghanistan, supposedly, and of course since the UN wouldn't do Iraq, we had the "Coalition of the Willing," which was quite large at first. All the allies there just for show train their troops for awhile and then drop out, of course.
However, while none of our larger wars have worked and all have been lost after long periods of debt and deficit (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq II, Afghanistan), the coalitions strategy has worked pretty well to keep the world from treating us like a Germany. I'm not worried about our survival vis-a-vis the rest of the world as much as our survival given the terrible cost and debt and deficit of such wars; that debt and expense is always, always what brings down governments and states century after century: see the French Revolution, which started because the French crown had completely bankrupted itself with futile and pointless long losing wars.
All war is justified if you WIN. Be sure, if Germany had won either war, I or II, we would all agree that Germany was totally justified in taking its rightful place in control of Europe and much of the rest of the world. Serbia did nothing to us, either, but since Clinton won in ten and a half weeks, hands down, with a remarkable technology show, no one ever complains that this war was a "war crime."
Our problem is that we keep losing, and losing for a long, long time, lately at least ten years. The world will never excuse losing a war; it will always excuse and celebrate winning a war. Any war.
Don't consider how you want the world to be; consider how it IS. That's hard enough for anyone, since no one involved tells the truth about it. You don't have a long lever or a fulcrum and you cannot move the world. May as well just try to understand it.
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