In recent years, even before Donald Trump ever took office, the United States has been involved in the active manufacturing of the tools our enemies need to weaken us. We have done this through ill-considered wars, damaging policy choices, blundering actions and navel-gazing inaction. We are a long way from being undone as the world’s preeminent power. But there is no denying that of all those things “Made in America” in this century, those associated with America’s undoing deserve special attention.

The Iraq War is one of the starkest illustrations of this phenomenon. As reported in a sobering New York Times piece this weekend, despite the United States’ extraordinary investment of more than 4,500 lives and $1 trillion in waging war in that country since 2003, it is becoming ever clearer that the primary beneficiary of those efforts is the one country in the Middle East the United States regularly cites as an adversary: Iran. We strengthened their proxies in the government even as we weakened or destroyed their enemies. Further, our errors in Iraq are not limited to the overreach of the George W. Bush administration or President Barack Obama’s desire to get out too quickly. Recent actions, from the Trump administration’s actions in “liberating” Mosul to those the U.S. government have recently taken in neighboring Syria, have also strengthened Iran.

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In Syria, the Obama administration hesitated to act to contain the brutality of the Bashar al-Assad regime and then proceeded to tacitly embrace Russian intervention. The current White House gives more overt support for the Russians, meaning that, again, what we have ultimately done is helped sustain an enemy.

In Afghanistan, we have also spent about $1 trillion and lost more than 2,300 lives. All of this will almost certainly benefit the Taliban we entered the country to defeat.

This past week brought more consequences of our self-inflicted foreign policy wounds. In Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, within close range of the Middle East, China opened its first overseas military base. China sent a message that it is ready and willing to flex its muscles. China’s military expansions come alongside its efforts to fortify itself along key land and sea trade routes. Beijing has been strengthened economically by Washington’s errors; U.S. efforts during the Obama years failed to counteract China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Fast-forward to today and witness the Trump administration’s foolish abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which has opened the door to greater Chinese economic influence.

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And of course, we have strengthened Russia through our failure to stand up to it in Crimea or Syria, and have been inert with regard to Russia’s attack on our electoral process.

Even as we have waged a war on terrorism that has distracted us from greater priorities, we have also taken steps to measurably benefit terrorists. These have ranged from torture of prisoners to the targeting of Muslims in immigration orders to Trump policies that have led to skyrocketing collateral civilian casualties associated with our military actions in the Middle East.

The damage we have done to ourselves, of course, is not limited to foreign policy. Congress is contemplating a health-care bill that will, by taking coverage away from millions and making it unaffordable for millions more, almost certainly kill more Americans than every terrorist attack we have ever faced or seem likely to face. As bad as our foreign policy errors have been, our domestic errors have done even more damage to the country.

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