And I have to disagree with this notion. America got itself involved in something that has been happening for centuries. Personally most historic wars I disagree with as well. As said if I could turn back time and go into history. I teach the world how to fight wars with nerdy equivalents to murder. Something that leaves less people broken.
"All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing."
You know what triggered World War 1? Archduke Ferdinand getting shot by a Serbian assassin. You know who the Serbian assassin worked for? The Black Hand. (Or, at the very least, TBH had a hand in the operation.) You know why The Black Hand was a thing? Because The Balkan States were an unstable hotbed of violence that fought against the Ottoman Empire for their freedom, only to fight among themselves over which group should take precedence in the countries that formed thereafter. Violence there was so widespread and regular that people simply accepted it as normal and
did nothing about it. Every side formed alliances and became more and more hostile toward each other over time until Austrian ambition triggered a war with Serbia that sparked the first world war.
You know what triggered The Crusades? Islamic Jihads that ripped across the medieval world time and again, imposing its rule town after town, country after country, while Europe stood by and did nothing because "it's not our problem." They didn't step up to do anything until The Pope united Christendom to go wage war and shove Islam back from the East, Jerusalem, and the Iberian Peninsula. (It was also a convenient way politically to get the Christians to stop killing each other, but more on that later if you really want to know.)
You know what triggered World War 2? The Nazis steamrolling over Poland and forcing France and Britain to declare war on them...
After spending several years rearming unimpeded, breaking every treaty imposed upon them along the way, and having their loud mad shouty leader screech hate filled nonsense over the air waves in a way nobody could pretend they couldn't hear. Meanwhile, in Asia, Japan slowly but surely went from being a single island power to enslaving Korea and several islands into their sphere of influence, with atrocities so insane that they have never again been reflected in human history... Though ISIL is surely trying to best that.
"Not our problem."
So, should we just wait until it becomes our problem, then?
You speak of centuries, but, funny story, I know all about it. I've read the history books. Every time some horrifying destructive force grew, there were plenty of opportunities for us to stop it. We simply chose not to. If Archduke Ferdinand had lived, war might have been avoided, because he had political power and was extremely against the idea of Austria going to war. If the Allies had attacked Germany before she could rearm under Nazi rule, the war would have been over by Christmas and Hitler dead before he could orchestrate the deaths of seven million Jews. If Christians really did care about each other, they could have curbed the growth of Islam before it spread itself far and wide across its borders and forced several brutal, violent wars.
Thing is, war is ugly. War is violent. You don't have winners in the subsequent battles, just survivors... But it is sometimes a sad necessity when evil, violent men rise to power. How many more Syrians have to flee their country before we decide to do something? How many more women raped in ISIL breeding camps? How many more gays flung off rooftops? How many more threats levied at the West? How many more terrorist attacks on subway trains and towers?
Some people want nothing more than to destroy you just because you exist and refuse to capitulate to them. "Teaching" them less violent ways of conducting business won't make them change their minds. You can wish for a more peaceful world all you like, I wish it was more peaceful too. Again, I detest war, but when someone wishes for your death and promises to deliver it to you once they're finished beating your neighbour, do you really stand by and do nothing?
Mankind means more to me than national borders. I just wish it meant more to others too. Then we'd have less wars, ironically.