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Most people including the left don't want another repeat of Iraq or Afghanistan where the US chose to regime change a country.
But are happy with supporting a democratic country to defend itself against unwanted aggression.
Any weaker democratic country can be taken by a stronger non-democratic country?
"Invasion" is part of war. If you go to war against a country this may often involve invading. Wars are hard to win if you're not there. If there is no threat of going to war you are essentially yielding the world to Russia and China and the likes.
This is not to say the US hasn't made a lot of mistakes but I'll take a US world order with mistakes over a Chinese or Russian world order.
The US invaded at least 2 countries and killed 2 million plus people in the last 25 years. Where were you then to stop the "invasion?"
It is easy to observe how under Obama, the allegedly anti-war candidate pivoted to supporting invasions. He forgive his predecessor's use of torture. He said incoming administrations shouldn't prosecute the previous. The only gift he didn't grant was the wish to invade Iran.
There is a sense that the defense, foreign policy and intelligence establishment will have their way regardless of electoral outcomes. Trump's first term was unique in that he did not start any new wars. Permanent Washington sought to actively sabotage his administration. Many infer a correlation between the two observations.
As for the assertion that, "If we don't spend x amount of dollars or intervene, the world will devolve into WWIII", I'm not sold on this doom. We might equally ask, If the US continues to misallocate resources via uncontrolled spending, will we have a functional economy capable of fielding a meaningful military response?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/29/obama-never-understood-...
He's super smart, had great intentions, and messed things up completely.
What exactly do you suggest Obama should have done with "the power of the USA to stabilize it?" Invade? How would trying to 'fix' Syria be any different than trying to fix Iraq or Afghanistan?
But that's just my opinion. My point being that "let's not intervene and let it play out" ended up with an amazingly bad outcome because the fear of a bad outcome from an intervention. Clearly a bad decision. A good decision, whatever that might have been, would have a better outcome. If the argument is that no better outcome was possible then that seems pretty wrong on the face of it.
Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan (e.g.) are fairly different places.
How many times do we have to go down this road, tear apart countries, fuck them up more, and leave with everything in worse shape than before?
The US does not have the right to interfere and has proven over and over again that it will do all of the wrong things while trying to force other people with different ways of living and thinking to behave in a western way.
Sometimes, yes. A more powerful entity has a moral right to act to stop cruelty and abuse if they can.
I think acting to dismantle the Taliban, for example, is completely justifiable morally.
I guess the US gets to unilaterally decide what's right and wrong for the world, and kill however many people it takes to demonstrate the shining hope that is Western democracy!
By your logic if Japan hadn't attacked the US then the US should have just stood aside and let the Germans take Europe in WW-II.
Every time we've intervened in civil wars, the outcome has been bad, with one exception -- Korea.
The problems with your thinking are:
#1 It's how the neo-cons think and is the justification for all of the US terrorism in the past 40+ years.
#2 Who are you to say what the best outcome for another people are? Which people? What group in Syria will have this great outcome now that it's controlled by Isis?
#3 How many people did you get to kill to experiment with nation building? Do you really understand the internal power dynamics of countries like Syria, Iraq? Or are you practicing a form of Imperialism?
The power of the USA is what destabilized it, by creating a breeding ground for all sorts of fun militias in Iraq.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-the-us-supports-the-islami...
>Ultimately, whether one pallet drifted into ISIS hands by accident in a recent airdrop is a moot point. Billions in cash, weapons, equipment, and vehicles have already been intentionally supplied to the many groups that ISIS represents, as planned as early as 2007. ISIS is the purposeful creation of the United States in its pursuit of regional hegemony in the Middle East, and ISIS’ atrocities were predicted long before the first shots were fired in 2011 in the Syrian conflict, long before the term “Islamic State” went mainstream.
I think the US left is still generally anti-war. They hesitated to support Ukraine. They're locked into "why can't we all just get along" thinking. The right doesn't think we can get along but also doesn't want the US involved.
Whereas the previous crop of wars was a direct result of the US getting "more involved". Afghanistan, Iraq II, ISIS in Syria, Libyan civil war...
How has it worked out since then? I count a 100% failure rate.