We could have had an independent South Vietnam in much the same way that we have a Republic of Korea. We intervened in Kuwait and rescued that country from Saddam. Obama got out of Iraq on the timetable established by Bush, but Obama failed to negotiate a SOFA, which could have reduced the current violence and provided the time for the country to recover from the war. And frankly, it is far to early to come to any conclusions about the impact of our "interventions" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our leaders would do well to study how the thinking and positions of Douglass MacArthur evolved over time and how some of his insights still pertain. MacArthur came to understand at least some of the rational of why Japan fought. Japan and most Asian intellectuals were humiliated by European dominance in the economic and political life of Asians. They abhorred the British presence in Malaysia, India, the Mideast, Hong Kong,China and Singapore. The Dutch in Indonesia , the French in Indochina and the Americans in the Philippines.
Virtually all the countries you mention have good relations with their colonial "masters." The British left behind democratic institutions and economic systems that have contributed to the stability and success of these countries. The British helped defeat the communist insurrection in Malaysia, which took 12 years.
You need to get better informed about Japan and its own imperialism. The people of the Philippines, Korea, China, Singapore don't have fond memories of the Japanese or their rationale for killing millions of them.
They were of course nationalistic and ravenous imperialists but MacArthur came to understand this important point.
And the point is? Why did Japan invade Manchuria and set up a puppet state in 1931 if they were upset about European dominance? Why did they commit the Rape of Nanking? I guess we also need to understand that the harsh treatment of the Germans at the end of WWI led to WWII. So we must understand why Hitler acted the way he did. Yeah, right. Japan and Germany were just victims. The Japanese had no other choice but to attack Pearl Harbor and the Germans were forced into attacking Poland.
MacArthur also understood that the vast population and political currents in Asia were beyond the capability of the US to change meaningfully.
But MacArthur's leadership in Japan created a modern democratic country with a constitution. I would consider that to be meaningful change. Our defense and support of Korea has led to a modern democracy and a booming economy.
Also just have to wonder as you look back on your career that the America you were fighting to protect and defend as a young man would become a place where officials dump fresh water into the Pacific ocean during a drought to protect an obscure fish while farmland dries and people suffer, or if you ever thought that Detroit would resemble Hue after the Tet offensive.
We are definitely heading in the wrong direction. While Europe is moving away from the welfare state, we are expanding it. Our immigration policies have rapidly changed the demographics of this country as we enter the era of tribal politics. America is in decline economically, culturally, militarily, and morally. We are losing our personal liberties in the name of security.
I was in Danang during the Tet Offensive, but as bad as Detroit is, it in no way resembles Hue and the carnage there.
America has a lot of mending that will not come easy, and really should not squander its resources on futile foreign entanglements.
We are a global power with global interests. That said, we will be, by necessity, less and less able to project our power abroad. We will suffer the same fate as the UK when it had to make hard choices between guns and butter. As I have indicated, butter (welfare state) wins every time because it has more constituents.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Someone else, perhaps China, will take our place. If that happens, the world will remember fondly the days when the US was the world's lone superpower--a generous, gentle giant who believed in freedom and liberty for oppressed people everywhere.
I was in Warsaw during the days of Solidarity. I can recall vividly the time when Pope John Paul II drove by our Embassy in the Pope-mobile. A crowd formed spontaneously behind the Pope shouting long live America and Ronald Reagan. Riot police attacked them with clubs sending them scattering thru the side streets. This was an act of defiance in a Communist police state. What America says or does matters to many people who look to us for support.
I lived four years in Berlin when the wall was still in place. JFK's 1963 speech still resonated with the people of Berlin almost 25 years later.
I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin. And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.
Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum." Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner."
I appreciate my interpreter translating my German!
There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sic nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.
Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us. I want to say, on behalf of my countrymen, who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last 18 years. I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin. While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of. the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it, for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.
What is true of this city is true of Germany—real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. In 18 years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people. You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner!"
PS: You need to learn how to create paragraphs.
The point that is not being communicated is that the Western values of the European enlightenment (articulated so beautifully in JFK’s speech) and the bedrock inspiration of post War American foreign policy, are not always compatible with the culture and customs of the lands that Americans find themselves intervening. Afghanistan is just one example. The natives eventually resent the intrusions and view it as cultural imperialism. American soldiers should not be deployed as cultural missionaries. As a former foreign service officer, it is a bit surprising that you are not aware how bitterly most Asians resented European dominance of their political and economic lives despite the “benefits”.
You are correct that changing demographics has changed America forever and will affect foreign policy. An example is how support for Israel is declining. Post war America was largely of European descent and was very sensitive to the Holocaust and supported the founding of Israel and supported it during difficult times. Today that support is withering and the policies of Obama and Kerry, who themselves are in power due to those demographic shifts, reflect those domestic political changes.Simply put there no longer exists in the US a common social consensus that would result in broad support for US interventions of the types you historically described. America has changed and not
necessarily for the better.