Earlier quoted context omitted.
Israel is interested in self-preservation, the United States is interested in imperialism. This is the root difference in the strategies; we stay in Iraq or Afghanistan because our leaders want to establish friendly governments there. If we left, the people would reject the sham governments we've installed and resort back to something that provides their needs, fundamentally, stability and security. It's a privilege…
The only alternative to 'sham' governments imposed from outside are 'strong men', Saddam, for all his shortcomings functioned remarkably well in that role as did for instance Tito in former Yugoslavia. Tribal friction needs an equally strong force to overcome it if a country is not to explode into its constituent parts. So if you remove the strong man once he's established terrible stuff can happen, sometimes worse t…
Please be careful with that. In my country (brazil) we had a US-sponsored military dictatorship in the sixties-eighties that was both "strong men" and a "sham government", and it crushed a lot of the intellectual and cultural development happening in brazil at the time, all the while only preventing a very small risk that the country would turn communist. And today one of our most US-friendly presidents (Lula) is an ex revolutionary (and many people in his government were politically persecuted, exiled and tortured during the dictatorship).
It's really awful to think that this is still happening in other places around the world, and that fundamentally the american people do not see any major problem with the idea of interfering militarly in a government across the globe.