Another reason to loathe the evil party
A few years ago, if some evil theocratic thugs started sadistically murdering children, the United States could (it almost never did because (a) when the Evil Party controlled the country, we were backing the theocratic thugs or (b) when the Stupid Party controlled the country the Evil Party would hop up on its isolationist horse and call for not interfering in world affairs, but the threat was there) have the local ambassador send a strongly worded "The United States objects to this brutal behavior and requests that your government consider a more merciful approach" memo -- no threats were needed, but they were implied -- which oftimes would have an impressive civilizing influence on the offending fundamentalists.
Today, of course, if some country that's under the boot of fundamentalists decides to murder children, like, oh:
...Amongst the victims which I personally know of were an unmarried pregnant woman and her four-year old child. The mother was executed in the street with three shots while her child watched. Then the little boy's throat was cut....
What are we going to do? Why, nothing; the entire US military is tied down in the quagmire, so any threat from the local ambassador will be greeted with, at best, a scornful laugh, and, at worst, a dozen or so additional children brutally murdered. The thugs have already fought it out with the United States, and they won because the allegedly most powerful military in the world is being directed not by politicians, but political analysts who don't believe that anything exists outside of the borders of the continental United States.
So our armed forces get thrown out in ones and twos, and get slowly chopped to ribbons by the increasingly competent resistance forces in our imperial conquests, while the fundamentalist butchers sweep in and take all of the spoils. And the fundamentalist states that have been left standing? They cheerfully take time to say "thanks for the political support, chumps!" while they line up children and butcher them like cattle.
Iraq was better off when the butcher Hussein was in power. He kept the fundamentalists from bathing the country in children's blood, and the threat of American firepower survived as a deterrent to the others. Now the United States armed forces can only watch helplessly as the country disintegrates around them while almost every other dictator in the world laughs and asks "what are you going to 'bring it on' with, white boy?"
If the Christians are right and there's an afterlife, I want to be the fly on the wall when Maximum Leader Genius and Darth Cheney go before Minos for judgement.