SO, ARE YOU/WE BETTER OFF NOW THAN BEFORE??

Before what or when??
An antediluvian flood.
Asteroid.
Climate disaster.
Ice age.
How about BEFORE CIA SPONSORED COVERT COLD/HOT WAR AFGHAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS, POLISH SOLIDARITY, USSR INFILTRATION, PENETRATION, COMBINED, subsequent COLLAPSE, COUP, COUNTER-REVOLUTION?
Try that one on for size.
IF above shoe fits, describes, YOU, WEAR IT proudly!!
NO finger pointing, blame game and/or throwing THAT SHOE at anyone BUT YOURSELVES!
Be happy.
Celebrate!
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, to paraphrase our most recent pickled brain Boy Emperor.

NAZI BUSH-OBOOMA CIA DICTATORSHIP post USSR continues rolling merrily along, PRINTING FIAT MONEY, DEBT, with SAME policies as described above.
NONE, ZERO, ZIP, NADA, PRINCIPLED OPPOSITION HERE.
Total, complete, abysmal abyss.
A Marianas Trench.
Endless, bottomless, infinite, Dis-United Suckers and Assholes TAXPAYER FUNDED MONIES for PROXY ARMIES, COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY MILITIAS, COUPS, SURROGATES, FREEDOM FIGHTERS, NAZI ISLAMISTS, MB, NATION BUILDING, FOREIGN AID, PRIVATE SUBSIDIES, INVESTMENTS, TARP, STIMULUS, ETC.
A list to go indefinitely.

Meanwhile, disenfranchised continental Arabs and Africans become TOTALLY DISPENSABLE, DISPOSABLE, COMMODITIES, pawns, collateral damage, bargaining chips, untermenschen, useless eaters, caught between competing, conflicting, marauding armies SUPPLIED BY THOSE ABOVE IN ADDITION TO PRIVATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA, CHINA, IRAN, NATO, in a newly revised, rehashed, version of an old Great Game chessboard. 
Overlapping, dissecting, conflicting, GLOBAL ECONOMIC INVESTMENTS combine with LOCALLY SPONSORED GREEDY OPPORTUNISTS, HIRED HATCHET MEN, SOCIOPATHS ALL.

SUCH IS POLICY!!

DESTABILIZATION, STATE DISINTEGRATION, CHAOS, ANARCHY, ensue, encompassing, engulfing, most everyone, everywhere, everything, in a spiraling vortex of violence, resistance, opposition, flight, fight, refugees, displaced people, etc.

Of course, cowardly interests as those represented ABOVE instead of sending their OWN troops into battle, utilize local surrogates, proxies, militias, mercenaries to fight and die for them.
Consequences of such policies being less reliability, indirect control and enhanced, escalating, infighting.

Actually, if people believe imbecile Bush privatized warfare via sub-contractors like Blackwater and Halliburton (never prosecuted criminally), even MORE so now because ENTIRE wars, ground troops, OUTSOURCED.

However, we/they STILL provide PROFITABLE sophisticated weaponry, gadgetry, hardware, paraphernalia, air, space, sea, special forces, operations, transport, TECHNICAL SUPPORT, advisers, etc.

They just leave most of THEIR dirty, hands on, ground work, dying and fighting, to other stupid and/OR, PERHAPS, desperate, unemployed, grunts.
Much more simple and easy to have people who speak a similar language kill off each other than OBVIOUS, OVERT, foreign invading occupation forces with NO cultural experience, cues, clues, similarities.
US troops sympathize OR go nuts, berserk, becoming themselves unreliable, fish out of troubled waters.

Much easier telling STUPID, MORONIC, IDIOTIC, BRAINWASHED, MANIPULATED, populations such as those that exist here, willingly swallowing most ANYTHING, no matter HOW outrageous, unfeasible, implausible, it sounds, explanations like, they fight because it is genetic, historical, religious, terrorism, things of that sort.

Of course, it helps to have an ENTIRE NAZI OCCUPIED, COLLABORATIVE, INVESTED, COMPROMISED, ESTABLISHMENT apparatus from academia, education, to religious, labor, media, reinforce, propagate, amplify, fictional explanations, narratives, causative messages.
A vast reverberating echo chamber and a COMPLIANT, obedient, pliable, malleable, stupid, ignorant, idiotic, receptive audience whose critical faculties tethered, mesmerized, wired to redundant commercialized electronic gadgets and two second sound bites.

Being determines consciousness.
Out of sight, out of mind.