9/11 + 5 years

[G.Irish]

If we put the hundreds of billions we've put into blowing shit up in Iraq into actually helping to provide for a better quality of life for these people, we'd be seeing much better results...instead of...the negative ones we're seeing now

Eh, you can't improve the quality of life when you've got people blowing stuff up and killing people daily. The truth of the matter is that we made some military mistakes at the beginning of this endeavor that gave the insurgency enough room to build momentum.

We've actually spent a ton of money on rebuilding their infrastructure. When you talk about providing better quality of life that's not something that we can necessarily give them, you can merely give them a start that will allow them to build it for themselves.

Ultimately though its not that easy, theres the massively corrupt middle eastern governments to deal with that also inhibit change and modernization, how we deal with them is another story that I honestly have no ideas/answers for.

This is key. It is a massively complex and multi-faceted problem that will take several different approaches to solve. To put it simply, its not the kind of problem we can solve with just a hammer, nor can we solve it with an olive branch or a handout. Its going to take many different tools to address many different issues.