Young Americans have never witnessed a functioning foreign policy
ft.com
ft.com
Not really—it massively increased Iran's influence in the area, which is why in 2007 they had to panic, reverse course, and start backing al-Qaeda again ("the redirection").
Looking forward to the future where Americans wake up to learn why they are the most hated country in the world. They’ll still think it’s only because of Trump.
This is revisionism. The agenda of al-Qaeda was to establish a caliphate. The whole "al‑Qaeda Plot to Just Sit Back and Enjoy Collapse of United States" meme was just a pivot after they got pummeled by the US army, after 9/11. That's not to say the US won, but the US losing isn't the same as al‑Qaeda winning.
>al-Qaeda[a] is a pan-Islamist militant organization led by Sunni Islamist jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic caliphate
Given that Bin Laden is al-Qaeda's leader, it's approximately correct to treat them as the same entity, unless you're arguing that there's some factional struggle inside al-Qaeda.
>I said, "Bin Laden wanted to destroy America". Am I wrong for believing the evidence of his actions supports that assertion?
No, because the "destroy America" objective came afterwards, after his most bombastic attack, so there's a texas sharpshooter fallacy going on, where you're redefining your conditions for success. It's like putin invading ukraine claiming to want to conquer the entirety of it, then after years of stalemate pivoting and claiming all he wanted to do was capture donbas.
Bin Laden's words:
"Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge. Is it in any way rational to expect that after America has attacked us for more than half a century, that we will then leave her to live in security and peace?!!"
It's rough being a Millennial. Came of age at the end of the last time the country was arguably "healthy", then 9/11 happened and it's been downhill from there.
"It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or a college auditorium and come out in favour of the things everyone else in the room is against like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on"
The what is the definition of "functioning"? The unlimited NATO expansion began under Clinton, Middle East expansion, wars and regime changes under Bush Junior.
All presidents since Dubya continued the containment of Russia policy and the Middle East expansion. The fall of Syria and cooperation with Al Qaeda occurred under Biden, Trump was crazy enough to sign off the Iran special military operation.
So it functions in the sense that the US retains energy dominance and keeps the EU, Russia and China down.
Or does "functioning" mean "pretending to be nice to allies"? That is the domain of the Democrats.
The post war Republican Party had been all about building alliances and being nice to allies! The current Republican Party is so different and distant from the stances of the party just 20 years ago.
After 9-11 it became obvious that there was a political and economic gold-rush opportunity under Cheney (who was the brains of the Bush admin). The US constructed Operation Iraqi Freedom to finally eliminate the uncontrollable and brutal Saddam family, while satisfying the needs of various parties (eg SA, Israel, Iran, Kuwait). Again the US population got a different narrative and there were no political consequences.
This trend of ignoring what the US populace needs to know, doing whatever benefits those that are in power, then constructing a fake narrative continues. The names are different, but the policy is non-existent. The difference in the Trump Administration is that the constructions challenge reality or simply don't exist. The political consequences have been the same. None[1].
Maybe it's always been this way.
[1] The primary driver of political consequence in the US seems to be economics, because that's a consequence that's measurable and cannot be rationalized as a patriotic good for some imagined future state of the world.