You know you are intellectually bankrupt when you accuse your opponent of engaging in idpol when he's been arguing anything but. Everything I've said so far has been strictly materialist in nature.

No (para)military force can operate unmolested without a large enough percentage of the the population being implicitly unopposed to their presence. Whether this is direct approval or approval of the intermediary entity (in this case the local opinion leaders), is irrelevant. The idea of a foreign power domineering over a sheepish people is a liberal fever dream. Your military learned this the hard way.

If you think I cared for a second which creed or skin colour determined the foreign aggressor in Iraq, you've clearly constructed yourself a strawman. Nevertheless, the US has done imperialism from Cuba to Chile, from Iraq to Indonesia. If you think Iran's politics of spheres of influence comes anywhere near to this, then you need get your R&R in one of the hundreds of bases you possess all around the world.