But for the sake of the soldiers serving & dying, we should at least recognize that the region will be flashpoint for decades. The best case would be no conflicts or threats from the region (nor knee jerk responses from major military powers. But more likely scenario is that this is a start of a series of conflict that will take more American lives…. hopefully in the very long run this is a battle we will win.

But for the sake of the soldiers serving & dying, we should at least recognize that the region will be a flflashpoint for decades to come

Yeah right

But take a look at this list of US military deployments since 1890. What really jumps out at me is that our military did nothing in central and Western Europe between WW1 and WW2. We were the one single nation that could impacted the situation, but we left Europe to it’s own devices and 50 million people died as a result.

http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

I can only hope that these fatherless children can someday look back and appreciate that their parent gave his life to pre-emptively defuse a major flashpoints in the middle east. As in my example above, it will take decades to unravel whether Iraq, Iran, Pakistan orYemen are exactly the right locations for US military presence. But the region is in turmoil, and I would argue that although it’s really bad having our military there, it might be even worse if we they weren’t there.

Those are some heartbreaking pictures Joe either way.