Yeah, we should have stayed out of those countries the way we stayed out of Germany long enough so the nazis could really get the slaughter going. How many American lives did that cost? How many lives in all? Because we wanted to ignore what was going on 'til we had to shut the barn door after the horse was already loose. And now the world has become a much smaller place with much bigger bombs for the jihadists to play with if we let them get their hands on them. No one in America wants to lose American lives though you've deluded yourself into believing that Bush is doing it for personal reasons - he may not be the brightest but he's certainly not that evil - but if we learned anything from the aftermath of WWI and from WWII it's that you can't abandon a country once you've defeated it's government and you can't wait around while people who want to kill you build up their strength. We've got a foot in the door now that we didn't have in the 1930s, a presence in the region, and while we're in this boxing match of a war we're hopefully using up their strength in small skirmishes rather than letting them gather their forces for a real war. Nothing is certain, it could yet become a larger war, but if we give them half a chance it'll be a large war anyway. You just can't use reason and diplomacy with these extremeists whose sole intention is to kill you, that's a fools errand. They only understand strength and in their eyes all your whining proves to them that you are a weak infidel that doesn't deserve to live.