Wow... Okay, I've stayed out of this for a while because I was waiting for it to calm down. Now, I'll go point-by-point, and try to be brief.
1. Elections. Yeah, we know. We screwed up in the latest one. Castro and Russia offered to send in peacekeepers to help maintain democracy here. I thought it was funny as hell, but we got through it. No harm no foul.
2. Vietnam. We lost because we failed to achieve what we set down as our mission goals. There are several reasons I won't go into. If we HAD sent our entire military might into it, we may have won, but we didn't. And if we had own by bombing it into oblivion, it'd be the punchline to the old joke: The operation was successful, but the patient died. The domino effect was next to nonexistent, we got in there to flex our political muscles. The cold war came AFTER we started fearing communism, you know. And USSR came before. We were afriad of communists within, andin the labor movement (Thank you, Bauer!).
3. Drinking age. I often wondered about that. I think it's because they drink alocohol in many european countries as THE basic drink. Not only are they used to it, but they don't drink to get drunk, most of the time, whereas a much higher percentage of Americans do.
4. America the beautiful etc. Doesn't exist. We're a county like all others. Most isolationist, highly idealistic, but unwilling to get our hands dirty. We didn't join in WWII to stop the concentration camps, or even to stifle germany's spread or to assist the UK. It took Them attacking Us. We, like most people, are largely self-centered. Vietnam was the first time a powerful propaganda machine failed to sell a war. We've done pretty good, all in all. And we are amazingly young still. I don't mind being the joke of england. They're a thousand-odd years older than us, no? And england is relatively recent compared to some of the older european countries.
5. Kosovo. I can't see your objection to it. I actually thought it was handled quite well. It was, in part, a show of power to prevent further losses. It was also an effective manuever.
6. As far as I know the richest country per capita (as of 1995) is Luxemburg. It has no income tax, so it's used as a tax shelter by many. It's no doubt changed since.