The anti-communist movement of the cold war was a CIA psyop. It was their ploy to destroy the isolationist and America first movement. Getting conservatives to embrace global wars of intervention and sanctions.

This is going to sound controversial but doing absolutely nothing to oppose Communism would have been a disaster. In fact, I wonder how many of you guys actually read the comic? Because it explained early on that after the revolution in Russia, the Reds tried to spread their beliefs to the rest of the world. Even during WW2, when Hitler signed the non aggression pact with Stalin, Stalin still went ahead and invaded the Baltics and Finland. He also mass murdered Polish officers and the educated class, which shocked the Germans when they uncovered it.

It's impossible to be 100% isolationist in a vacuum, since the Soviets never practiced it. Look at Afghanistan? The Soviets had meddled there first and they had occupied the country for almost a decade before it became America's problem. Or look in Africa, and the Soviets were training rebels to attack South Africa, Portugal & Rhodesia.

Opposition to Communism was not a bad thing, it was the methods and lack of restraint on the U.S part that had negative blowbacks. For example, America shouldn't have personally sent troops to Vietnam. But there would have been nothing wrong with sending aid and weapons to the South Vietnamese instead.