But Jaylan, realize that these locals often supported communist-like movements whose only goal was to overthrow freely democrated elected governments, and most of these movements were a direct threat to the Government of the United States. The US isn't just going to sit around and watch a bunch of genocidal banana dictators set up enemy communist regimes around it whose sole goal is the overthrow of capitalist, democratic systems like its own.
War isn't nice, it's not pretty. People die, that is the nature of war, and some of them will die very unfortunate and even unnecessary deaths fought during the course of the fog of war. The video showing the killing of what turned out to be unarmed civilians is pretty dramatic, but it's a very narrow picture of the events going on. These helicopters were out to save American lives on the ground, and several of the people in that picture appeared to be carrying weapons. We can't always fight wars by stopping the opposing soldiers and then asking them for identification and conducting a cross examination as to why they are there so we can conclude what their true intentions are.
I agree with the article on Islam, muslim governments freak out when a depiction is made of their main prophet but when muslim extremists carry out plans to slit the throats of thousands of christian children, as they did at Beslan in Russia in 2004, then all you hear from them is crickets. There is something inherently wrong with Islam, and this needs to be recognized. Change needs to be made from within, or they will continue to have their cities bombed and razed to the ground.
The United States is in a bit of a quandry (I am not American by the way). When it does not act, as it did not during the rapid genocide in Rwanda, it is made to look like a country that sits back and does nothing while genocide unfolds. When they do get involved, as they did in Iraq, they are painted as warmongers who are only out to get money from oil.
The reasons the US went into Iraq are numerous: This is an Iraq under Saddam that was destabilizing an entire region. A region that supplied a vast amount of oil, which is vital to industry all over the world so people like you and me can work and put food on our tables for our families. Can you imagine if all of the profits from the enormously lucrative oil industry were found in the pockets of these extremist Islamic groups? Can you imagine an entire middle east full of little mini-Irans? And even though the US is the world's third biggest producer of oil, this is still not enough to feed its demand. Saddam invaded Iran, he invaded Kuwait, he used chemical weapons against his own Kurdish populations, and he supported terrorism even before the 1991 Gulf War by providing headquarters, operating bases, training camps, and other support to terrorist groups fighting the governments of neighboring Turkey and Iran, as well as to hard-line Palestinian groups.
This guy clearly had to go. Even the 1991 Gulf War didn't set him straight: even after that he continued to defy UN security council resolutions. The guy was setting a standard that all defiant dictators after him could follow, ie that they can continue to destabilize entire regions and kill millions of their own citizens without having to worry about any kind of intervention.