"...the primary motivation we had was to ensure that some socialistic philosophy didn't take root among the peasants"

This isn't necessarily so, we've been meddling in South American politics since way before socialism existed as a political force, indeed, since before the existence of socialism in any form. In fact, it started as soon as we were able to do so. It started with the Mexican War in the 1840s, where that country lost about a third of its territory to the US, even though the dispute had been originally just over Texas.

Then came Cuba and Puerto Rico, part of the US's drive for foreign colonies around the turn of the century, Spain's empire was falling apart, and we were late getting into the empire game. When we couldn't get the government in charge of the Isthmus to let us dig a canal through it, we sponsored a revolution that created the current state of Panama so we would have someone friendly to negotiate with. Then came a long string of little banana wars in Central America to ensure American interests: ownership and control of central American agriculture and the American companies that dominatd it.

Long before there was socialism there was imperialism, but Americans didn't invent that either. The Europeans and Ottomans were doing it in Africa and the Mideast, the Japanese and Russians were doing it in Asia, but the New World was our turf. The world has never been a bipolar place, it's always been an arena of multiple competing forces and shifting alliances. The players and the battlegrounds change, but the cause is always the same: A struggle for control of the world's resources and markets by the nations/enterprises that seek to dominate them. Our obsession with the big bad socialists has always been a fraud. We're still using them as an excuse and they've been essentially dismantled as a global political force for years now. And of course, when socialists are willing to deal, like the Chinese, we'll trip all over ourselves to buy and sell from them.

After the arrival of socialism as a political force in Russia, everything continued as before, but now there was a holy excuse to meddle in other countries and make sure they didn't expropriate "our" property. The list includes the usual suspects in Central America, Cuba again, Chile, and who knows where else, the struggle often goes on under the surface and out of sight, or in the political arena where we can pretend economics and warfare have nothing to do with it.

I'm a political realist, myself, and if American prosperity and freedom are threatened by some tinhorn dictator like Chavez, who wants to turn them over to a foreign power that presents a military threat to us, then I say crush 'em. The world is an ugly place and our enemies don't care about morality, and they will stick it to us if it suits them and if they can get away with it. But we don't always get into military adventures overseas for such noble or desperate reasons, it's usually because some business or industry is afraid they'll lose the goods they've swindled from someone else, usually with the help of some local thug they've got in their pocket. I have no problems with the Marines going in to protect American jobs, but the United Fruit Company should be able to take care of itself.