Why is America waging wars abroad if it sees its top priority as restoring its economy at home?
America finds itself in the same position as many other declining empires in their final years: economically weakened at home by self-interested elites and overextended abroad, bogged down in wars it cannot win but is unable to abandon. The major geopolitical event of the past decade has been the rise in power of violently anti-American forces in the Middle East, largely due to the previous U.S. presidents launching and then bungling two wars. He invaded, occupied and then handed over Iraq to members of the Shiite tribe allied with the anti-U.S. Iran, immeasurably strengthening and emboldening it. He then murdered and tortured innumerable innocent civilians in Iraq, spawning a new generation of anti-American fanatics. After throwing out the anti-American Taliban in Afghanistan, he abandoned it. The Taliban regrouped and now control 70 percent of Afghanistan and, more ominously, a growing area within neighboring nuclear-armed Pakistan. Cant Obama reverse the foolish policies of his pred
