[quote=@Vilageidiotx] I think the point is that the issue is leadership, and the soldiers themselves are stuck in the middle. Iraq was a shitty war fought for shitty reasons, but that reflects way more on the government and the attitude of the American voter than it does the soldiers stuck in the middle of the thing. Though ones who act on their own to massacre civilians are evil motherfuckers. Fuck those guys. When it comes to the country in general... we got a lot of blood on our hands, and I would rather see people get melodramatic about it than pretend that America can do no wrong, but... it could have been a lot worse. Our best quality is the fact we grow disgusted in our own Imperium so quickly, and that people like Dick Cheney don't get romanticized like they would have in most historical Empires. I'm looking at you Britain, with your cute poems about machine gunning down all the natives. On the other hand, we don't have national healthcare... that is a pretty embarrassing blot on our honor. [/quote] Or we could be Mongolia where Genghis Khan is idolized as a hero of the Mongol identity where in China and abroad he tends to have a much more mixed image, if not down-right evil in many places. [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq-Wk3YqeH4]And then we enter into this fun shit[/url] But Hell, who the fuck knows. Maybe outside the context of 19th century nationalism our villains that are Dick Cheney might end up being painted in a brighter light provided on the shift of public opinion in the future as an effect of social shift. So maybe the Middle East will become the home of the new absolute-Hitler that we won't be able to defeat long enough we'll look at Cheney as our Richard the Lionheart.