Kulturkampf

[Nintex]

I really hope i'm just stating the obvious here: most of these seems like something that would have been some really good advice back then...

People aren't ready for the conversation but in hindsight Rumsfeld was right all the way back in 1989.
The wall fell and NATO "won" and all the former secretaries of defense gathered a roundtable to think about the next steps. And Rumsfeld hit the nail on the head.

“Who do we want to provide leadership in the world?” “Somebody else?”
 
Starting with Obama the US and EU stopped to provide leadership and the signal that it was Joever was the messy pull out from Kabul. The result of not providing leadership has been terrible. Instead of a stable world economy, global security and growing wealth all we got is chaos and marxist infiltration in the form of woke and trans ideologies. Saudi Arabia talks about becoming the "new Europe". Do we really want a world that is led by the Saudis, Russians, Chinese? Do we like what we're seeing so far when we decide not to act?

Germany counted on Russian energy, Armenia counted on Russian security, Africa counted on Chinese investments, Israel counted on Saudi diplomacy. It got them nowhere. 
In that sense Trump was on the right track, trying to broker peace between Israel and the Arabs, keep enemies like Iran in check, crafting stronger ties with Poland and other Allies, making NATO energy independent, and engaging with North Korea.

Our enemies feast on our "restraint"

Invasion isn't necessary either. Just a few missiles and bombs to send them back to whatever shitholes they crawl out of should be enough.