Ask HN: Is the US foreign policy insane? And if so, how can we change it?
The USA has recently been ceding control of Afghanistan to the Taliban, after two decades of military presence and so many resources spent on controlling territory. The same as the Soviets did decades earlier. That’s what prompted me to write this down and put ALL THE EVIDENCE IN ONE PLACE. Let me summarize it without any sugarcoating:

USSR had USA mired in Viet Nam. So USA created a Viet Nam for the Soviets by funding, arming, and training fighters against them (Afghan Arabs, Mujahideen) and drawing them into a costly occupation to drain their resources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

Afterwards, we went in and spent 20 years and trillions doing exactly what the Soviets were doing, but on our own dime.

This past decade, the CIA even did studies and confirmed that arming rebels hardly ever does anything good, but we continued to do it anyway (latest was in Syria).

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/us/politics/cia-study-says-arming-rebels-seldom-works.amp.html

The million refugees that Lebanon accepted from Syria have now contributed to an economic crisis of epic proportions in that country, which FOX News is almost completely not covering — certainly silent relative to Venezuela — because it can’t blame socialists so it lacks the “moral” cautionary tale for its viewers.

For being hesitant to get involved in Syria, Obama’s adminstration was called “weak” and Republicans said they would “prefer Putin was our president” while the media and Congress chastized him for not “leading” in that region. The entire issue was framed around whether USA is the “indispensable nation” and Obama had to literally cite destroying peaceful alliances and making countries “barely hold together” in the face of rebels with American weaponry. Mind you, the point of citing all was NOT to highlight a negative for the people on the ground, but as evidence for domestic consumption to portray us as “leading” more than Russia in that region. As if our ego and “indispensability” was the most important thing. The framing is quite dystopian:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wib6cLJ99yY

Meanwhile, the very groups (including Al Nusra Front) creating the instability and civil war came to be as a result of our actions in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.

USA and Saudi Arabia funneled billions to rebel groups who later founded Al Qaieda, and simply left them there with no oversight. Hillary Clinton pretty much openly admitted it:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2f52cp

Then that created massive security problems for USA and Saudi governments, with some of the largest terrorist attacks on their own soil coming from the same Wahhabi groups they funded. So they started the war on terror, passed the PATRIOT act, and put in place a lot of mechanisms to erode civil liberties at home (indefinite detention etc.) torture nearby (enhanced interrogation etc.) and for invading and occupying countries thousands of miles away (including the Authorization to Use Military Force) which the executive branch of the US government alone pretty much used to go into many countries without Congress authorizing war, relying on that AUMF even a decade later in conflicts seemingly unrelated to 9/11

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_of_2001

We put together some international coalitions, destabilized Iraq by ousting all Sunnis we had installed earlier, turned Libya into a total failed state by outsting the Gaddafi government, and the Wahhabi ideology spread to other countries via Boko Haram (Nigeria, for example), and ISIS (Iraq Syria and many neighboring countries).