Disagree, again: Back in the day, many leftists — especially the radical ones, who not infrequently were Communists or sympathizers — proclaimed loudly that Pax Americana and its small wars were facets of an allegedly-rapacious capitalist-colonialist imperialism, extracting resources from the poor and redistributing them upward to the wealthy, and suppressing popular revolutionary movements that professed to want to even things out.

(I recently re-read David Halberstam's magisterial The Best and the Brightest about the origins of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, including backing the French efforts to stay as the colonial power after liberation from Japanese occupation. Highly recommended.)

> And when I was a mainstream young liberal in the 1990s and early oughts

It's not your fault you missed the 1960s and 70s.