this line has been and will continue to be trotted out every time Americans or their allies are braying for war anywhere and with anyone ever since the one example everyone can point to in Nazi Germany. how many times has the US justifiably escalated confrontation since WWII, and how many times has it led to a good outcome (and how many times has it led to arguably genocidal warfare on the part of the US)? Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, too many other examples in Latin America, Iraq, Afhganistan, as well as every smaller operation listed in another comment in this thread? America is the biggest threat to peace in the world today and has been since the Second World War.
even if you take it as a given that Americans have good intentions and China is literally Hitler, the calculus of appeasement versus confrontation has to be a hell of lot different from a hundred years ago and compared to a world without any nuclear weapons. The costs of pushing confrontation with Germany in the 30s would have been minuscule and provincial compared to those resulting from escalation between nuclear powers today.