Six decades later...

Between Iran, Afghanistan, the legacy of habitual deficit spending and the dominance of the U.S. military-industrial complex today, I'm really starting to wonder if the U.S. 'victory' in the Cold War was the epitome of a Pyrrhic one.  Many of our actions during that 'long, twilight struggle,' however realpolitik they seemed at the time, came with consequences for future generations.

[On this day in 1953,] the Iranian military, with the support and financial assistance of the United States government, overthrows the government of Premier Mohammed Mosaddeq and reinstates the Shah of Iran. Iran remained a solid Cold War ally of the United States until a revolution ended the Shah's rule in 1979.

...and now that nation is highly hostile to us. 

On a nearby front, factions are ripping apart the allegedly pro-U.S. Iraq we spent nine years trying to cobble together:

Faced with security crises across the Mideast, North Africa and Asia, the White House largely has turned its attention away from Iraq since U.S. forces left in 2011. But the country has been hit with deadly bombings at a rate reminiscent of Iraq's darkest days, stoking new fears of a civil war. More than 1,000 Iraqis were killed in terror-related attacks in July, the deadliest month since 2008.
The violence has spurred Baghdad to seek new U.S. aid to curb the threat, said Iraqi Foreign Minister Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. He said a U.S. assistance package could include a limited number of advisers, intelligence analysis and surveillance assets — including lethal drones.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/08/16/3111560/other-crises-overshadow-growing.html#storylink=cpy

Here we go again... At what point will America decide it's not as globally omniscient and omnipotent as it thinks it is?