Thomas Jefferson would have been impeached and removed from office if he used U.S. military forces to protect the commercial shipping interests of other nations.
It takes a special kind of retardation to really believe the U.S. taxpayer should be paying the cost of protecting cargo ships owned by foreign companies that go out of their way to register these ships outside the U.S. to avoid paying taxes here and meeting U.S. shipping regulations.
In the case of Jefferson, he WAS acting in conjunction with other nations who had the same issues in Africa.
And they have fired at plenty of US assets going through that area to justify leveling a good part of Yemen.
You might not like it, but the US has spent the better part of the past 100 years leading efforts like this around the globe. You might want us to just pull up roots and stay out of everyone’s business. That is simply impractical and would just cause chaos.
But I guess you want Russia and China to fill the vacuum we would leave. Would that make you happy?