Even with competent leadership--- you might go to free Kuwait from Saddam and then have bases in Saudi Arabia and inspire bin Laden to send a gift to NYC.


All the meddling in the middle east is primarily (exclusively?) because of oil. We deposed a democratically elected leader because he wanted to nationalize his country's oil (Mosaddegh), and the Brits and us didn't like it (no profit for BP or Standard Oil, or whichever companies were involved in that). Long history, a lot of it being the tail end of colonial-style attitudes (e.g. Vietnam...formerly a French colony).

Service can be worthy. There are a lot of things that go on that we mostly don't hear about. Real threats. Many of them are of our own making (e.g. middle east terrorism provoked by decades of exploitation), and many not of our own making (e.g. middle east terrorism because one dude wrote a book about how immoral the West was after visiting the US in the -I think- 1950s).

There is a risk in any military service that during your time some incompetent boob with no regard for military personnel can be elected. But we have that right now, so it would be folly to enlist for the next three years. After that, we'll have to see.