The way the wars fed back into american policing, the justifications for the drone assassination program (but not here! not quite yet). A lot of what we're seeing now is the natural endpoint of processes that were started under bush "in reaction" to sept 11 and expanded under obama and later biden.
The main stream of the republican party has been, first quietly but then openly, fantasizing about authoritarian control for 25 years. And through that whole time the democrats have made it one of their biggest priorities to help them construct the apparatus needed to accomplish it. And our allies have been eager to get their hands on these same powers & systems to apply to their own citizens.
Honestly looking back the biggest mistake I made was that I thought the things that are happening now would happen in bush's second term. When they didn't I took seriously the possibility that I was wrong about the bloodlust of the american right, sincerely spent many years convincing myself they were in working in good faith towards what they understood was best for the world. I had it right the first time. For there is no truth in their mouths; their hearts are destruction; their throats are open graves.
By the way, the ending of what you wrote is beautiful.
The former is the only choice, because democracy is still able to maintain a slight pulse under their "leadership".
Social media has joined religion as the "opiate of the masses".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing_(Iraq...
You see Eastern European countries who were grateful for NATO expansion or wanted future NATO membership. You see the UK and Australia which always follow the US. There are a couple of wildcards line Spain, Denmark and Italy.
Germany and France are absent and there was huge criticism of the Iraq invasion at the time.
In general, the whole EU was much more critical of the US in the 2000s than it was in 2020-2024. The current criticism is mostly Trump related and not fundamental. To summarize, in the 2000s the EU had an independent foreign policy which is now completely gone. How that evolved exactly is interesting. Has the US played off the Eastern European countries against heretics like France and Germany to achieve this goal? Is it a symptom of the international elites moving in lockstep?
The US hasn't started an illegal war recently, which could explain why there is much less criticism of US foreign policy compared to the time of the Iraq war.
The US hasn't declared a war since WWII since executive privilege allows the President to pursue war without Congress declaring war. Does that mean that every time we take military action (which the US is doing daily, right now) we're pursuing what the founders of the country would (rightfully?) classify as an illegal war?
(I didn't take any political science, and I'm not really informed on constitutional law so I could have this partially wrong)
