I have at no time asserted it was impossible to drive the US from the Middle East. To the contrary, sowing domestic strife and global overreaction was an excellent first step towards accomplishing that in the long run.

All I’m granting him is an assumption of rationality and long term thinking. I’m not claiming any truth or facts or anything, I cannot read a dead man’s mind. But I can look at what happened and draw conclusions with the aid of hindsight, and strongly prefer that over simply trusting his word.

Are you unable to see how we have harmed ourselves since then? How about how Israel is harming themselves right now?