I don't deny that geopolitical incentives are involved, but do you really have difficulty believing that those politicians believed socialism was evil and democracy was good? Socialism had a lot of bad representatives at the time (Castro's regime included).
Maintaining strategic advantages against evil as the good guy is smart, and it's implemented in a variety of ways, and because the US isn't a single entity, there are a lot of different interests involved in US actions. Some are idealistic, some are materialistic. As you'be alluded to in your own post, the goal of many coldwar tactics were to keep socialist (synonymous with totalitarian at the time) interests in check.
There are past examples of US going to war over moral issues. Most historians agree that The American Civil War was almost entirely morally motivated. It was detrimental to the economy and defense of both the North and the South, yielded no strategic advantages, it was essentially two ideologies clashing.
Rumsfeld Era in the US is on the opposite side of the spectrum, and there's a lot of evidence to suggest war racketeering influenced a lot of military decisions. And it's put us in a nasty position, really, fueling anti-western sentiment to the East. I don't think that was a good move strategically for the long-term for the US, despite any perceived short-term gain. Nobody likes us anymore. We aren't the saviors we were in WW1 and WW2.
__________________
H̓̇̅̉yͤ͏mͬ͂ͧn͑̽̽̌ͪ̑͐͟o̴͊̈́͑̇m͛͌̓ͦ̑aͫ̽ͤ̇n̅̎͐̒ͫ͐c̆ͯͫ̋ ̔̃́eͯ͒rͬͬ̄҉
|