I definitely agree with your sentiment, war is war and as brave as our soldiers are, they are not all the sharpest tools in the shed. I still have a lot of respect for them though.
As for the middle east having made up its mind about America a long time ago, this is BS. Hitler convinced good Germans (clearly not all) to exterminate 6 million Jews. The hate the middle east has for America pales in comparison. There are as many in the middle east who love America as hates it. The American public does not get both sides of the story, nor does the middle east. The USSR and the USA nearly wiped out the planet, if anyone does not know how close we really were to nuclear holocaust, it's an amazing diplomatic story of people who went against their own superiors, went with their gut instict (the instict that seperates us from animals) and made sence of what no one else could...
When I was a kid, I used to watch all the "be all you can be" commercials on T.V.; the feeling I got was not different than the feeling that came over me when Mary Lou Retton won gold in 1984, hair on back of neck standing up.
Today, it's pissing on dead soldiers and addiction to "Call of Duty".
BTW, thanks for your service and I mean that!