I'll try to go in order... My Muslim friends, coworkers, and drinking buddies don't recognize this facile caricature of Islam and the Koran. Bush the Lesser, O

I'll try to go in order... My Muslim friends, coworkers, and drinking buddies don't recognize this facile caricature of Islam and the Koran. Bush the Lesser, Obama, and Trump have all repeatedly rejected this specific description and claimed that we're not at war with Islam; why do you disagree? The Middle East isn't the only place we find Muslims anyway; why aren't we invading Indonesia? Saddam didn't cause 9/11. Taliban didn't cause 9/11. Daesh didn't cause 9/11. The war in Afghanistan will soon be old enough that it could be sent to fight a war. We've commemorated 9/11 for long enough, with enough blood and destruction. What Middle Eastern "proletariat" is "uprising"? They occasionally elect someone who has some socialist sympathies, only for that leader to be deposed like we did in Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, and basically every nation in Central America. (Just think how much money the military-industrial complex has stolen from the taxpayer over how many decades, made possible by destroying the liberal modernizing government that Iran had in the 1950s. Ike and the Dulles brothers didn't get paid near enough for that...) Who are we to complain about political changes in other nations, anyway? Our nation was born in revolution. Our own current election cycle seems likely to introduce some socialist reforms. (Please don't suggest that we invade Vermont.) What does Russian or Chinese espionage or "interference" have to do with anything we've done in the Middle East? Do we have no spies? Did we not get Yeltsin elected? Are we not underwriting the protests in Hong Kong right now? Wes Clark told us about the 7 Muslim nations on the "to invade" list; when are the invasions scheduled for Russia and China? Are we likely to win those wars? It's as if every single natural action of a modern nation can be mutilated into a pretext for more disastrous war. 1A actually protects every single action of which Russia has been accused (without evidence) of taking with respect to the 2016 elections. As for this "pax" mythos, I don't know just what to say. I try not to disparage anyone's religious belief. Let's just say that even for the tiny portion of the vast sweep of human history that might fruitfully be understood through a lens of "empire and pax", most humans living at the time hadn't heard of the relevant empire much less had paid it fealty. Even if we restrict our attention to such periods of empire, it's not easy to shoehorn USA's actions in modern times into that analytical framework. Wars without states are small. Wars among normal states end, eventually. Wars that USA fights are permanent plagues upon humanity, with no purpose other than to enrich armaments manufacturers. (Yeah, I know, we've withdrawn from Libya, so it's no longer contributing to the bottom line. Still, with the slave markets etc. I think it can still be considered a plague upon humanity. It's hard to be sure; reporters don't dare go to Libya and keep track of the carnage by counting the bodies washing ashore in southern Europe.)