America and Anti Americanism

A simple glance at the news today and we will be able to hear and see that the United States is incereasingly becoming a major pain in the butt for many nations. It ravaged Vietnam, Afghanistan, then Iraq...notice the similarities between the three countries that i just mentioned? All of them were attacked for reasons that only seemed to be understood by the power elite in washington but not justified to the general public, or else justified with shabby intelligence reports that seemed to pull the wool over most Americans.
To top it all off, the average American on the street doesn't even know where these countries are! I thank Jay Leno for that interesting nugget of info
Whatever happened to the principles that Amerca has stood for during the days of the Founding Fathers notably Abe Lincoln himself, the person the abolished slavery despite great opposition from everyone.
Now the President of the United States seems to me to be a slug of a man, whose intelligence is doubtful at best coupled with big multinational corporation ties that totally destroy his credibility and impartiality.
What were the Americans thinking when they faced the ballot box?
Apparently they were not thinking at all...