during the beginning of the last Iraq war, I was at a social event and somehow ended up saying that 'at least this is been so obviously foolish that it should cause us to really think twice about doing anything like it again', and someone 20 years my senior turned to me from another conversation and said 'we said the same thing about Vietnam'

People get complacent thinking the system just keeps working no matter what, and not that a lot of effort from talented people goes in to to keeping it working. So they vote in a total moron and discover the good times aren't innate.

I guess someone right after the Great War / the war to end all wars could be forgiven for thinking people wouldn’t be trying that again anytime soon.

What I would consider different this time is that I think the US is in the looting stages of collapse and will be unable to credibly fight such a war even if a minority wanted to.

I have a bit of a conspiracy theory about Trump starting the Iran war as a grift to get $200B appropriated only to abandon the region and have the money disappear.