Again, your argument of individuals being more effective than the government is just silly. How many people refuse to give handouts to the poor? How many people ignore the poor altogether? How much have you accomplished by yourself? Do you honestly think that individuals with limited power and resources can effectively enact change better than the government?
Consider the kind of government-run aid given out during the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and the way in which it literally fixed an America crippled by the Great Depression and the collapse of the stock market. By your standards, you would have expected private corporations or organizations to provide food and clothing to those displaced by economic hardship despite the fact that history has proven that that never happens. Private companies, like Walmart for instance, provide short term relief, like ice and bottled water in New Orleans (which was turned down by FEMA, by the way), but in the long term, when it comes to getting people back on their feet and providing them with affordable housing of some sort, those same organizations never follow through.
Sure there are effective and ineffective government, but it all depends on who is running it. I don't think you could honestly say FDR's government was ineffective, and he launched more "socialist" reforms than any other president in history, whereas Bush's government has been largely ineffective and costly because of the fact that he's relied on independent contractors and private companies to do the jobs that government workers could otherwise do for less. When you have a president whose fundamental ideological stance is that government doesn't work, how can you expect to have a functioning and effective government?
As for the militarism of the United States, here's a very short list for you.
-1954 CIA sponsored coup of democratically elected leader Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala for wanting to redistribute the land possessed by the US owned and operated United Fruit Co.
-1973 Overthrow of Salvador Allende, democratically elected leader of Chile, and installation of dictator Augusto Pinochet
-American installation of the Shah of Iran, which eventually led to an overthrow by the population of the country and the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini. The US harbored the Shah after he was deposed despite the demands from the Iranian government to hand him over.
-The US backed the dictators Suharto in Indonesia and Marcos in the Philippines.
-The US provided Saddam Hussein with the chemical weapons he used to gas the Kurds, along with the weapons he used in his war against Iran in the 1980s.
Many of these places are hotspots of radicalism all over the world today. The CIA uses the term "Blowback" to talk about unintended long-term consequences of US foreign policy. Is it really too much for you to grasp that the people of nations whose affairs we have meddled in might begrudge us for our actions? Conservatives always ask things like "What would drive someone to become a suicide bomber?" etc, and simply attribute it to either insanity or the fact that these "terrorists" hate "freedom." How would you feel if a country overseas that was meddling in your economy was the source of your economic hardship? How would you feel if they had been manipulating your government and causing you to suffer economically, politically, and socially? And most importantly, how would you feel if members of your family were killed by the military actions of said country? Wouldn't you want revenge? For every civilian we kill overseas, whether it's in Iraq or anywhere else, we create two new insurgents. For every woman that is raped by a US soldier, and yes, it has happened, we create new insurgents. For every massacre that is committed, we create dozens of new insurgents. In other words, to say that US militarism or foreign policy has no effect around the world is simply wrong. We create our own worst problems, something highlighted by the fact that our own worst enemies today were once our allies.
As for "Judging past actions with current knowledge," if you want that to be the standard, then the US, or any other country for that matter, isn't responsible for anything that it's ever done. Just because you might have good intentions, and I'm not saying the US always has, when you intervene in an area doesn't mean that you are exempt from taking the responsibility for your actions. Conservatives know this better than anyone else, or at least they claim to. If you screw up, you're respected to accept the consequences, not just attribute such failures to unforeseen consequences as you deny all blame whatsoever for the mess you created.
Not everyone believed that Iraq had WMDs. The infamous "Downing Street Memo," as well as the American NIE all showed that the likelihood that Saddam Hussein had restarted his WMD programs was very, very low. Anyone who bothered to read the documents for themselves could see this. Instead, the administration, with the help of the media, helped to spread propaganda that lied this country into war. They provided the Congress, both Republicans and Democrats with their information. They sold the war as a cakewalk where we would be greeted as liberators, a statement which anyone could judge as patently false. The current in-group of influential conservatives all believe in nation building and using American power to change reality. Everyone from Francis Fukuyama to Bill Krystol to Paul Wolfowitz all subscribe to the doctrine of American empire, and they were highly influential in shaping the administration's post-9/11 foreign policy.
Lastly, show me proof that Bush has stopped a terrorist attack. So far, he's 0/1, as 9/11 happened on his watch. Where is your proof? Don't just give me the specious argument of "it hasn't happened so he must be doing something right." How do you know that Al Qaeda hasn't attempted an attack on the US mainland because they're too busy destroying our military in Iraq and Afghanistan? How do you know they're not planning attacks on other countries instead? The fact is that you don't. To automatically attribute a lack of attacks to successful policy is just illogical and wrongheaded.
