this author traces a more accurate reading of history than what you were told in school, and you may be somewhat surprised unless you've been exploring real history long enough to reach the same conclusions;

Let’s be blunt: the 117,466 U.S. soldiers who died in World War I died for nothing. No one can deny that. In fact, that might well be the reason why interventionists changed the name from Armistice Day to Veterans Day. They wanted Americans to stop thinking about the fact that all those American soldiers in World War I died for nothing.
After the war was over, the American people knew that those soldiers had died for nothing. That’s why they were overwhelmingly opposed to the U.S. entering World War II. They had had enough of foreign interventionism. After losing 117,466 soldiers for nothing in a foreign war in Europe, the last thing they wanted was to go through the entire experience again.
The United States was founded on the principle of non-interventionism in the forever wars in Europe and Asia. That non-interventionist philosophy was captured in the speech entitled “In Search of Monsters to Destroy” that John Quincy Adams delivered to Congress on the Fourth of July, 1821.
There are lots of monsters in the world, Adams pointed out. Always have been. Always will be. Tyrants. Wars. Revolutions. Civil wars. Starvation.
But America’s job was not to send military forces to Europe or Asia or other faraway lands to slay those monsters. Instead, America would serve as a haven for anyone who was able and willing to flee the monsters. That’s what America’s policy of open immigration for more than 100 years was all about. It told people: “We will not send troops, bombs, or bullets to save you but if you can get out, there is one place where you can come without fear of being forcibly deported back to your monster.”
The turning point came in 1898 with the Spanish-American War, when U.S. proponents of foreign interventionism were claiming that America could never be a great nation without acquiring colonies, like the other empires around the world. That’s how the United States ended up owning or controlling former colonies of the Spanish Empire, like the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and Cuba. That’s how the United States ended up with Gitmo, which would ultimately be converted into a U.S. torture and prison center........https://www.fff.org/2018/11/12/u-s-soldiers-died-for-nothing-in-ww-i/