[jmyeet]

We created Saddam Hussein. He was our foil against Iran. We propped up a war that killed over a million Iraqis and Iranians in the 1980s for no net strategic result.

And why did we want to punish Iran? Because the fundamentalist regime overthrew our puppet (the Shah).

And how did the Shah come to be a dictator, essentially? Because we overthrew the liberal democracy Iran had in 1953 at the behest of the british because Iran had wanted to control their own oil and BP wasn't happy.

Even the fundamentalist regime in Iran is kind of America's fault. Saddam Hussein expelled Khomenei from Iraq in 1978 (IIRC) because when it became clear that Iran was lost, we wanted the fundamentalists to take over instead of the communists because we didn't want Iran to fall into the Soviet sphere of influence.

It's also a pretty similar story with Osama bin Laden.

As payback for Soviet support for North Vietnam, we supplied arms to the rebels in Afghanistan after the USSR invaded. Supplying Stinger SAMs to the mujahadeen was particularly devastating and these included Osama bin Laden.

Isn't it weird that all this foreign interference always go badly and all these former puppets somehow end up becoming huge problems for us later? When will we learn, exactly?

It's also worth noting that there was a strong desire in American policy circles to overthrow Saddam well before 9/11. 9/11 and the fake WMD story just became the excuse. For example, in 1998 a bunch of people sent a letter to then President Bill Clinton urging him to invade Iraq and topple Saddam [1]. Just look at the signatories on that letter and what part they played in the War on Terror.

[1]: https://zfacts.com/zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/98-Rumsfeld-Iraq....