The what is the definition of "functioning"? The unlimited NATO expansion began under Clinton, Middle East expansion, wars and regime changes under Bush Junior.
All presidents since Dubya continued the containment of Russia policy and the Middle East expansion. The fall of Syria and cooperation with Al Qaeda occurred under Biden, Trump was crazy enough to sign off the Iran special military operation.
So it functions in the sense that the US retains energy dominance and keeps the EU, Russia and China down.
Or does "functioning" mean "pretending to be nice to allies"? That is the domain of the Democrats.
The post war Republican Party had been all about building alliances and being nice to allies! The current Republican Party is so different and distant from the stances of the party just 20 years ago.
After 9-11 it became obvious that there was a political and economic gold-rush opportunity under Cheney (who was the brains of the Bush admin). The US constructed Operation Iraqi Freedom to finally eliminate the uncontrollable and brutal Saddam family, while satisfying the needs of various parties (eg SA, Israel, Iran, Kuwait). Again the US population got a different narrative and there were no political consequences.
This trend of ignoring what the US populace needs to know, doing whatever benefits those that are in power, then constructing a fake narrative continues. The names are different, but the policy is non-existent. The difference in the Trump Administration is that the constructions challenge reality or simply don't exist. The political consequences have been the same. None[1].
Maybe it's always been this way.
[1] The primary driver of political consequence in the US seems to be economics, because that's a consequence that's measurable and cannot be rationalized as a patriotic good for some imagined future state of the world.
It's rough being a Millennial. Came of age at the end of the last time the country was arguably "healthy", then 9/11 happened and it's been downhill from there.
"It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or a college auditorium and come out in favour of the things everyone else in the room is against like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on"
The current republican party is comedically more corrupt than the current democratic party.
Not really—it massively increased Iran's influence in the area, which is why in 2007 they had to panic, reverse course, and start backing al-Qaeda again ("the redirection").
This kind of reflexive both-sides-ism works to obfuscate the _huge_ difference in scale, _and_ the occasional, small-but-real attempts of mostly democrats to do something about it.
Now, if the democrats had more big donors than republicans, maybe they wouldn't? But that's a counterfactual that we can't know. But we do know that Bush 1 vetoed a soft money limit passed mostly by democrats, and that Clinton pushed for one, but didn't get it done.
McCain-Feingold passed the Senate with 48 out of 50 D votes (96%), and 11 of 38 R votes (29%) (and one I (100%)), the House with 198 of 210 D (94%), and house, 41 out of 217 R (19%), 1 out of 2 I (50%). Then it was a mostly R appointed Supreme Court that gutted it. Then a _more_ R appointed court that has continued to whittle it down.
For all that the Democrats don't go far enough, there is a _huge_ difference between the parties on this.
This is revisionism. The agenda of al-Qaeda was to establish a caliphate. The whole "al‑Qaeda Plot to Just Sit Back and Enjoy Collapse of United States" meme was just a pivot after they got pummeled by the US army, after 9/11. That's not to say the US won, but the US losing isn't the same as al‑Qaeda winning.
>al-Qaeda[a] is a pan-Islamist militant organization led by Sunni Islamist jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic caliphate
neuroelectron•44m ago
https://archive.is/OJyDx