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Notes -
This is even an exaggeration. Those wars had negative effects at home partially because American troops were fighting those wars but primarily because of policy decisions that really werent related to war per se. Instead it was the choices about occupation and the goals of that being discordant with the prosecution of the war.
If we wanted to occupy Iran and Afghanistan and reform the countries, we needed to engage in total war that put the fear of god into the natives, then appointed a local governor of our own to govern with an iron first for some decades.
If we wanted a surgical strike to remove a few bad guys, we could conduct the war as we did, then put in a couple of military bases to conduct strategic raids when we wanted to and mostly never have our boys leave those until we get tired of the minor expense and go home.
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