You’re right, the behavior of how Iraq and Afghanistan were handled was entirely different from either Germany or Japan after WW2.

My assertion is that the USA did too much “occupation” and not enough “governance”. Both Iraq and Afghanistan essentially had anti-government resistance movements forced into pseudo-national rule without any time to develop local governance.

Once the states were broken W wanted to get out, essentially since he feared accusations of imperialism. Which kept a good twenty year plan from being implemented, and instead led to a twenty year quagmire with one of the two essentially being a failed state.

(Man, that’s a lot of essentially’s)

I don’t mean to defend either invasion as either good for the people or necessarily for American security. I just want to point out that W’s position was “go and break things then go home” which is about as imperial as a viking raid.

“I just do what I want” isn’t a philosophy, because it doesn’t give guidance as to what someone else should do . It’s just childishness.

Even Randism / Objectivism stretches selfishness into “rich people should do what they want”. Trump doesn’t even get that far

I’ll grant that the orange felon is consistently selfish, though.

Even Bush jr wasn’t as much imperial as he was militaristic. Iraq and Afghanistan would both have arguably benefited from a time as an American protectorate like Germany or Japan, but W handed over “sovereignty” while the wars were still ongoing.

Trump isn’t coherent enough to have an understandable philosophy