[roenxi]

The US has basically 2 geopolitical threats - the EU and China. Destabilising the middle east might have inconvenienced them and denied access to the oil reserves there.

Apart from that silver lining, the US's adventures in that region have been expensive failures that have presumably spawned a generation of hatred and fear, and provided a cover of distraction from issues that might actually matter (like dealing with a debt burden that is on par with the World-War II response, or the dissolution of civil liberties in response to a threat that was extremely mild by-the-numbers). And the sheer futility and pointlessness of all the death, maiming and redrawing of maps is just breathtaking.

Imagine a world where political issues were dealt with starting with the largest and working to smallest. In this world, every debate would be mentioning the fact that entire countries are being persecuted for no particular gain. Mysteriously, this issue is not one of the most hotly debated issues (although it does get attention). Eg, when Trump talked about withdrawing the last few troops from Syria that was considered controversial. Would that more important people had courted more controversy before Afghanistan and Iraq.

All that is the long into to the point: I think GP meant that more American voters need to be exposed to war to generate the appropriate political response. The whole last 20 years of American military action turned out to be no-brainer bad ideas and people are still acting like they were defensible in some sense. The major anti-war voice in the Democrat primaries seems to be a veteran, which suggests that exposure to the situation on the ground helps form anti-war sentiment. If everything is automated, more idiots will think that the last 20 years of military activity are somehow appropriate and not crazy and less sane people will have the needed exposure to argue with them.