I think we could also include America's actions in the 1970's and 1980's. I was on the USS Ranger (CV-61) from '82-'86. One day we were off the coast of Central America, and we held an airshow for a Guatemalan general - complete with a supersonic fly-by that scared the crap out of me (we'd all been watching a slow-flying Tomcat, so no one saw the other Tomcat screaming up from behind).

Anyway, several months later, in the one-page news screed posted on the bulkhead (this was pre-internet, remember, and few of us got newspapers on deployment), I saw a blurb about how that same Guatemalan general had held a coup and was now in control of Guatemala. It gave the day it happened...and it was the day after the airshow.

Gee, *why* were we there?