None of the above.

Yes, I fully understand that the US supported a long list of tinpot dictators in the pursuit of larger geopolitical goals, AND that life was not good under those dictators, AND that in some cases, nominally democratic leaders were undermined in favor of those tinpot dictators.

I'm making no "appeal to anti-authoritarianism", I'm simply restating the explicit goals of US policy, right up to this week.

Supporting those tinpot dictators was specifically to prevent expansion / pursue containment of larger and even more murderous dictators.

While the rhetoric was anti-communism, the reality, especially now, is that the "--isms" were irrelevant. It is literally the Free World vs Authoritarianism.

Geopolitics is extremely ugly. People get hurt and killed, in large numbers. At least those trying to defend and expand the areas under self-determination try to minimize it.

The case you need to make is not that people suffered under the US-propped dictators, but that they would have suffered LESS under Soviet or CCP-supported dictators. Compare Mubarak supported by the US in Egypt vs Assad supported by Russia in Syria. Without some specific situation, no sane and informed person would choose to live under Assad over Mubarak. Same for Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan in Korea who you mention supported, vs Pol Pot supported by China. Rising prosperity and protection from NK, vs abject poverty and killings of millions.

To say that decades of strong (and often extremely unsavory) containment policy had "not a chance in hell" of preventing attacks on US soil is to ignore that the US won the Cuban missile crisis, preventing nuclear missiles from being stationed minutes from our shores.

It is also to ignore what is happening in Ukraine this minute. Russian govt officials have in the past months clearly stated that not only do they think Ukraine has no right to exist, but neither do any of the previous Soviet sphere-of-influence states, out at least to Berlin. They will NOT stop unless they are stopped, and we are the only nation on the planet who can organize stopping it.

All of it was one flavor or another of bad. But a lot LESS bad than if it had not been done.

It is pretty clear that you are so focused on your litany of bad trees, that you are unwilling or unable to see the forest.

And back to TFA and the topic of "winning":

The fact of the matter is that if any person wants to live a self-determined life, and under a self-determined government, they must be better armed, prepared, and allied than the bullies or authoritarians who would otherwise take their lunch or their territory.

This basic fact was for decades ignored under what I call The Great Experiment, which was the idea that open trade & information flow would bring free markets and open democracy to the unfree world.

It failed. Completely and miserably. It only empowered the dictators.

Under that illusion, and as a result of lessons learned from press coverage of the Vietnam war, political will to fight wars as anything more than holding actions has been almost nonexistent. So, most actions did nothing more than hold, neither proving nor disproving the ability to "win".

Even in Gulf War #1, where the 5th largest military was wiped out in weeks, the US held back for a number of reasons.

But we must distinguish between political will and military capability. Just because a military hasn't been given permission to go all-out, doesn't mean it cannot.

You may not have noticed the confrontation in Syria last year when Russian-backed Wagner (iirc) did something stupid that called for a US response. The result was they had a lot of body bags and dead equipment, and zero US/coalition casualties. No the US Mil isn't perfect, and as with any huge organization, a myriad flaws can be found.

but looking more broadly, I'd notice that there are many of those types of incidents, and considering that every other military does whatever it can to avoid a direct confrontation with the US, I'd have to put my bet on the US Mil still being the most lethal - and able to "win" any confrontation.

What evidence is there where the US Mil has been actually outclassed by any other mil?