Minding our own business isn't appeasing anyone. After the mess of 20 years in Afghanistan accomplishing nothing other than trillions in debt for our kids to pay off one would think even the most ardent war monger would catch on but no, it doesn't seem so.
I agree. We never should have let that drag on for 20 years.
You see, it used to be, when we went to war, we recruited a large enough army to do the job and we let the soldiers do their thing. I mean, I know, this is a crazy idea.
Instead, we half-assed it. We sent in not enough troops because we didn't have enough - and we still don't -
By way of comparison. In World War II, the US Army fielded 91 divisions. When I was in back in the 1980's, we had 16 active divisions and 10 guard divisions. Today we have 10 active duty divisions.... This isn't enough to fight a war on even one front, and it showed.
Our modern military doctrine thinks you can replace manpower with techonolgy, and that's why we spend so much with so little result.
But the real problem was, the time to completely crush the Taliban was in 2002. We didn't do that. We gave them a chance to regroup, and the ineptitude and corruption of the people we propped up made people long for the Taliban.