Quote Originally Posted by omarali50 View Post
My contention is that the reasons include some combination of deterring future attacks like 9-11 (or worse) “by any means necessary”, making sure that no organized modern state in the Muslim world actively supports or even passively tolerates such terrorists, and perhaps, getting some other geopolitical benefits in the process. Is that a fair assessment?
I think it's pretty accurate.

The problem is that our own rhetoric led us into overreach. I googled the following terms:

Community of Nations 179,000 hits for the past year
World Community 2,770,000 hits for the past year
International Community 8,980,000 hits for the past year

As long as we think in those terms we also think in terms of the rights and responsibilities of membership, among which are human rights and law enforcement. Since no one was doing the latter (especially not the UN), and since it's in the nature of US culture to "fix things," the US obligingly stepped forward.

If we all recognized that the "community" does not in fact exist, and that most people don't want their problems "fixed" for them by outsiders, we'd be much better off.