Hey Mike ... you really should have left Vietnam out of your post on the good Americans have done. That clusterfuck is the most shining example of American foreign policy gone mad. The men and women who died over there were heros. The same cannot be said for the policymakers and the political pressures that caused them to be put there and stay there.
Same with your references to Latin America. We have sometimes done some good there. More often, however, from the theft of Panama from Columbia to the countless incursions into Honduras, Cuba, Nigaragua, et al., we used U.S. troops to crush local resistance (labor unrest, etc.) to explotation by U.S. commercial interests such as the likes of United Fruit Company.
BTW, saw your in your post on GFY last night that
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But you know if it was JUST about oil, that would be good enough reason for me... most wars are fought over economic issues. Free flow of oil is one of the things worth fighting for. Oil is the fuel of democracy and free markets. Not only for cars, but electricty, all plastics, etc... OIL is the basis for almost everything people in the modern world do...
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Didn't somebody once attack the United States over our unwillingness to provide them oil, among other things? Who the hell was that ... what's the name of that place - Pearl something, ain't it?
Perhaps we could expand on that whole concept. If a smaller, weaker nation has something we need, and they aren't willing to provide it to us in a manner we consider acceptable, we should just be able to take it. We could call it "lebensraum", maybe.