VP Biden actually admitted that Iraq was shaping up to be a resounding success. At least until Obama pulled out all the troops and let it implode which led to regional destabilization in Syria and an emboldened iran. So Romanking is correct in his statement here.
I'm sorry, but that's simply incorrect - no matter what former VP Biden ' admitted'. Iraq has been plagued by sectarist violence since Saddam Hussein's fall. The decision to simply dismiss the then military while letting them keep their arms didn't exactly help either. Secondly, the decision to pull troops back was already taken under the Bush Jr administration.
After removing the US troops, the US government supplied enough military aid to keep South Vietnam viable. When the Democrats ceased funding the country quickly fell and the ensuing regional destabilization led to Pol Pot and the Cambodian genocide.
Utter nonsense. Firstly, South Vietnam was never 'viable'; the moment US troops departed, it collapsed. After the war had been secretly expanded to Laos and Cambodia under Nixon. You know, the man who promised 'peace with honor'. I'm fairly certain Nixon wasn't a Democrat.
With free money, healthcare and everything else that the West is handing out, who is going to say 'hey lets head back to our mud hut and scratch out some subsistence farming in the desert?' The Turks who helped re-build Germany after WW2 never went back to Turkey and there was no war or anything to deter them other than it was economically better to live in a German ghetto than go back to Turkey.
The refugees aren't going anywhere and they will have many more kids than your typical Westerner and will eventually out breed and then out vote you.
Farming in the desert is a Civ fiction. Turkish immigration into Germany was a result of the Wirtschaftswunder, not a cause. Birth rates among immigrants drop substantially, statistics show. (In fact, they are dropping all across North Africa.)
I worked with a lot of SA guys in Afghanistan who were there. Most were dismissive of the US's attempt at fighting insurgents without using adequate force. Once after receiving some indirect rocket fire into our camp the former 32 Battalion blacks wanted to follow the perpetrators, do the village they came from and put everyone's head on sticks. When told that we aren't allowed to do that they said you can't win without that level of commitment. Considering how ineffectual our policies have turned out I tend to agree with the guys who had been successful in that type of fight.
The problem in Afghanistan wasn't 'lack of force', but complete ignorance of local conditions and lack of political will to do anything about it. That hasn't changed. Any counterinsurgency specialist can inform you that no matter how many people you kill, if you can't win the hearts and minds of people, your efforts will eventually be fruitless. But sure, you'll foster enough hate for extremists to feed off. In other words, you can kill all the Bin Ladens you want, that will not end terrorism.