Having been an avid follower of the news since my early teenaged years, in the early seventies, you do miss a fair amount of the background.

For one thing, Afghanistan was actually somewhat socially progressive by the 60's and it was our efforts to goad the Soviets in their underbelly that left them with the Taliban as the only viable form of government.

If you study the history of government in Afghanistan, it was built around village counsels, forgetting the name, but gurkha sounds similar. So the form of the Taliban became an outgrowth of that, as the old monarchies crumbled under outside pressures.

Qaddafi was certainly a colorful character, but the effects of his overthrow show just what a power keg he was sitting on in the first place.

As for Saddam, he was our heavy against Iran in the Iran, Iraq War of the 80's. We put a lot of money and guns in there, to try and break the Iranians. Then after the war, he basically asked the GHW Bush administration if he could take over Kuwait, to pay the bills and basically got back a "whatever," from some woman who had the department. Then the Saudi's freaked out, so the Americans had to go in and beat him up.

Then 9/11.

What you have to understand is that the military is the only public works project capitalism can accept. The Federal deficit began with the New Deal, so not only was Roosevelt putting unemployed labor back to work, but unemployed capital, as well. Then WW2 came along and it was all turbocharged.

As I pointed out, the banks need that public debt to store the accumulated wealth. The military just has to make it go away. That's why we get these juvenile sociopaths put up there to decide what country to invade, not whether turning foreign, preferably brown, people to pink mist is an intelligent use of the nation's wealth in the first place.

So when George Jr got the job, with Dick Cheney as his Wormtongue, the joke was everyone wants to go to Baghdad, real men want to go to Tehran.

That's why I point out the military industrial complex is really just the trophy wife of the banks.

Now there is lots more untold history, but it seems the narrative control is starting to really spiral out of hand. So I guess just sit back and grab the popcorn.