The MSM-mediated government propaganda represents our interventions as well-intended but the real motivations have been entirely destructive and exploitative, and for a long time.  See Gen. Smedley Butler's 1935 book, War is a Racket, and track our largely covert post-WWII imperial interventions from Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954 through Indonesia, Congo and (overtly) VN in the 1960s through Chile in 1973 leading into Operation Condor and Iran Contra laying waste across South and Central America, to Central Africa in the 1990s before Bush launched the imperial state openly once again in the new century having presumably recovered from our "Vietnam syndrome" timidity when we waged war covertly and by proxy.