Have you considered that maybe there hasn't been so much fighting over here because we have a military that could completely curbstomp anyone if they try? There's also that issue of Pearl Harbor, where we tried to be neutral and they dragged us into it anyways. Then there's also 9-11, unless you are one of the truthers.
A woman sits down next to a man on a Stockholm park bench. Every so often, the man picks out a whistle and blows it. After a while, the woman ask him "Why are you blowing that whistle?"
"To scare away the tigers."
"How do you know it works?"
"Well, have you seen any tigers around?"
Correlation and causation et al. Sweden hadn't been in a war for over 200 years before we invaded Afghanistan with NATO, and it's not like we don't have desirable resources (iron and uranium for starters) or had an unimportant strategic position, and we were neutral for most of those years, with only a tangential relation with the US/NATO after WWII. And nobody invaded us either.
And besides, most of the governments over there are directly funding the terrorists anyways.
And the US is directly or indirectly funding many of those governments.
If I have to choose between their survival and ours, I think I know which one I'm going for.
There is no real reason you should live when they don't. Besides, that was never the choice anyway.
Perhaps leaving them to their own devices AGAIN was a mistake. It never worked. As soon as the occupying force pulls out, they just go back to doing what they were doing before, fucking with everyone else. The region is inherently unstable and dangerous, it seems.
edit: it's been like this for hundreds of years.
You never left them to their own devices. The US put Saddam Hussein in power. The US funded the proto-al Quaida organisation. The US overthrew the democratically elected Iranian government and installed the Shah. Every single problem the US, and the world, now faces in and from that region stems from American, and before that Brittish, interference in the region.
And going back further, the USA ad Britain built the entire
Japanese War Machine, Japan was
agrarian before about 1895, then by 1935 they had:
aircraft carriers, battleships, fighter aircraft. Whom do you suppose
sold them the technology, all that
steel and
oil needed to build that stuff? USA and Britain.
What you don't hear too much about is that the USA started backstabbing the Japanese (who were US proxies and industrial clients) in ~1940 because they were seen as
too successful after signing an treaty to back up the French colonial government in Indochina:
"The American oil embargo caused a crisis in Japan. Reliant on the US for 80% of its oil..."
The USA didn't give a flying fig about the "Rape of nanking" or genocide (they hired all the Japanese torturers after the war, actually) or 100'000s of dead Chinese. They continued to back Imperial Japan through all the worst human rights abuses . What they did care about was rival political influence in the Pacific.
Plus, there is the fact that American soldiers were already killing Japanese troops
before Pearl Harbour, which kind of disputes the "official" (read: for dummies) time-line of the "start of hostilities".
US support [for China] increased in mid-1941, with the clandestine formation of the 1st American Volunteer Group, better known as the "Flying Tigers." Equipped with US aircraft and American pilots the 1st AVG, under Colonel Claire Chennault, effectively defended the skies over China and Southeast Asia from late-1941 to mid-1942, downing 300 Japanese aircraft with a loss of only 12 of their own. In addition to military support, the US, Britain, and the Netherlands East Indies initiated oil and steel embargos against Japan in August 1941.
http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/worldwarii/a/wwiipaccauses_2.htmApparently the USA was so "incensed" about the "rape of nanking" (according to the revisionist history books) that they kept selling oil to Japan for 4 years after the event