The outcome depended on one thing only, and that was America's invasion of Iraq. That was the policeman's major police action this decade. The last one was Vietnam, which killed 2.5 million Vietnamese or more and achieved nothing.
I thought you liked the Vietnamese!
Even before that they threw out a democratic government in Iran that was much more friendly to the policeman than the current one.
I don't believe Huaren is so much longing for the past but saying that analysis of what happened tells us a lot about American foreign policy objectives and how realistic the reasoning behind them are.