Rugged Institutionalist

A response to the prevalent & idiotic "America bad" narrative of modern history, presented one day after the 25th anniversary of 9/11: -Saddam starts war of aggression against Iran, causes over a million deaths; -Saddam commits acts of genocide against Kurds in north and Shiites in south, killing hundreds of thousands; -Saddam starts war of aggression against Kuwait, annexes territory into Iraq; -Gulf states implore the US to intervene, which they along with allies do, liberating Kuwait; -US & UK impose sanctions regime on Baathist Iraq to constrain its established intent to initiate wars of aggression & institute no-fly zones over northern & southern Iraq to stop anti-Kurdish and anti-Shiite mass murder campaigns; much of the global left decry these actions as inhumane and imperialistic; -Bin Laden orchestrates the worst terror attack in world history, murdering thousands of innocent men, women and children in cold blood. His justifications are based on his frustration with the US's righteous actions against Baathist Iraq, his disgust with gender and sexual equality in the West, and conspiratorial antisemitism. Many leftists then attribute his actions to "blowback" for purported US misdeeds in the Middle East; -US engages in justified war against Taliban regime in response to their hosting of al Qaeda and refusal to hand over the perpetrators of 9/11. In the process, the US effectively liberates Afghanistan's women and minorities, and invests heavily in Aghanistan developing a more human system of self-governance; -In Afghanistan, the vast majority of civilian casualities are attributable to jihadist violence (suicide bombings, roadside bombings, and other militant attacks intentionally directed at civilian populations, coalition forces, and state entities); -US invades Iraq on questionable pretext, helps establish imperfect democracy. In doing so, the US overthrows a genocidal authoritarian regime, and effectively liberate the long-suffering Shiite and Kurdish populations, who taken together constitute a substantial majority of the population; -In Iraq, the vast majority of civilian casualties are attributable to Sunni jihadists and Shia death squads. On the Shiite side, much of this violence is supported, funded and directed by the IRGC. In total, more civilian deaths in Iraq are likely attributable to Iran than the US. -Every year, leftists, third-worldists and Islamists (closeted or otherwise) implore us on the anniversary of an unjustified mass killing of American civilians to remember "millions of victims of US wars" when the US wasn't responsible for the vast majority of the deaths, was fully justified in invading Afghanistan, and overturned an implaccably genocidal and expansionist regime in Iraq (the latter of which the left, having opposed the sanctions and no-fly zones that contained againdt it, would have allowed to regain strength and continue its crimes against Shiites and Kurds). Don't let the Mamdanis, the Medea Benjamins & the Hasan Pikers of the world twist history. The problems of the Muslim world are endemic to the Muslim world, and regularly spill out to cause global harm. The US isn't responsible for this, and has in fact operated to mitigate the harms caused by extremism both globally and within the Muslim world.