So what's the actual reasoning behind the USA's involvement? The spread of communism? China is a communist country and it's an economic superpower, much more than any of the countries where the USA was involved in an armed conflict. No matter how much the USA would have involved itself with the conflicts in minor countries, it would have had no effect on the macro scale, seeing how the larger communist blocks were already established at that point. The Vietnam war was nothing but a weapons testing facility of the United States; helicopters, the US assault rifles, napalm, armored vests and camouflage were all new innovations of that time. This whole "OMG let's stop communism" thing was just a cassus belli, the most influential communist countries were all established at that point.
The fear of communism was widespread in the United States at that point in time. There was so much propaganda involved with the USSR that the United States basically blamed everything on communism. You're right, it's not a terribly great reason. However, it's a reason that makes sense. The United States and the USSR fought a lot using "proxy states" in "communist vs. capitalist" wars during the 1950-1970s. The nations backing North Vietnam were all communist, so it points to the United States once again trying to contain communism.
The war itself started with France and north Vietnam trying to establish independence. North Vietnam was offered help from the Soviet Union and China as long as they agreed to join the "league of communist nations". France asked the United States for help in establishing democracy and the United States saw it as an opportunity to stop communism from spreading while being able to spread capitalism, which got the United States involved.
My point here is that the United States involvement is no different than the USSR or China being involved. It was under very similar circumstances. All nations were simply trying to spread communism/democracy/capitalism. I don't see why people single out the United States as opposed to the Soviets and China, who were all equally involved.
You response to this will probably be something along the lines of "the United States was way more involved than any other nation (even the Vietnams)" and my response to that is: committing troops to a war doesn't mean anything to bolster your point when all nations involved were testing technology.
I guess my overall problem with what you said is that the United States, the Soviet Union, and the PRC were all testing their technology and all involved in the region with similar motives. So why is the United States so heavily scrutinized?
Addressing your micro vs macro. The implications of Vietnam becoming completely communist and controlled by the PRC went far past the United States. Allies like the Khmer Republic (not to be confused with Khmer Rouge), Thaliand, and Laos were all in danger of having their governments overthrown in communist coups as well.
I guess my main point is that communism was a realistic threat in the eyes of the United States, especially to its allies in French-Indochina at the time.
That's exactly the problem: the USA is involved in this conflict when they have literally no reason to be. First of all, it somehow hasn't bothered the Libyan people that they were living in tyranny for the last thirty years, now that they saw something cool happening in the neighboring countries too, they decided to try achieving something similar, they however don't consider that in the countries of the region there never will be democracy as most of the monarchs today seized power through revolutions as well. They'll gain nothing but new tyrants over their heads and the USA (as well as other NATO countries) know that very well.
The idea was to help them establish their democracy instead of a monarchy. I think the fact that the United States waited to help the people until they rebelled just shows how un-involved they really are. It's only when the people needed actual help in establishing their own form of legitimate rule that help was brought in to solidify a democracy in hopes of removing any forms of monarchy.
It's also more the issue of Italy and France than the USA since they're the two countries getting the ludicrous inflow of refugees and they're the countries bordering Libya, not the USA. What happens in Libya and the Northern African countries affect Europe, in no way does it affect the US. Thus, the EU countries have the right to act on their own defense, but the USA has no reason to be involved in this conflict at all, yet they are.
The EU generally asks the United States for aid whenever they can.
So er... what's the USA's reasoning behind being involved in the European theater? You didn't really elaborate on that.
To help the Allies repel German's takeover of Europe and hopefully end the war. They were already involved in the Pacific, and the Allies needed desperate help. The turning point of the war was definitely when Hitler failed in the Soviet Union, however, the two-front war would've never been effective if the United States and Canada didn't help Britain re-take France.
That brings me to another point. Why doesn't anyone complain about Canada being involved in the European theater? From D-Day and on, they were involved on the same terms as the US.
Germany wanted to establish a united Europe under their rule on two occasions, which would have balanced the economic and military power of the USA, especially the one we see today. Clearly the USA didn't want to see that happening, so they rolled into Europe to help the Russians trash the Germans. The Germans wanted no world dominance, they wanted a dominance over Europe, which the USA (and obviously, their allies) didn't want to see. They were successful, today we can witness a divided and weak Europe, instead of a strong and united one, which would have provided a balance in the division of the world markets between the US and China.
After Dec. 7, 1941, when the United States declared war on Japan and began actively aiding the British with supplies, Germany and Italy both declared war on the United States on Dec. 11, which was reciprocated by the United States later that day.
I don't see why Germany would stop at just European dominance when all 3 of the axis powers had declared war on the United States.
