Those were decisions to change the specific names of specific places, not a decision to handle country names in the general way OP was describing.

why did they decide

Nobody sat down and made a decision to handle country names the way we do. It organically happened the way it did for no particular reason other than it works well enough.

why don’t we change everything back to how the countries’ place names are pronounced by their citizens out of respect

Nobody cares enough to undertake this. I don’t particularly care that people call the US by different names in their languages. People in Turkey aren’t asking us to pronounce their country’s name the same way they do. Most people are happy to apply the inverse golden rule on this, i.e., I don’t pronounce your country’s name the way you do, so I’m not going to expect you to pronounce my country’s name the way I do.

Would it make things harder or would it allow us to grow?

Yes, but I think it would be a lot of work for not much growth. You don’t learn a lot about a place by just pronouncing its name differently.

I do think there will have to be some cutting back, but it provides capitalists with the ability to discipline labor and absolve themselves (I would never do such a thing, it was the AI what did it!) which might they might consider worth the expense.

Al Franken is accused of more than just posing for a crass joke picture:

In the days that followed, seven additional women came forward with allegations of inappropriate behavior during photo ops. Lindsay Menz accused Franken of touching her clothed “upper” buttocks while they posed for a photo at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010. Two anonymous women made similar complaints related to events during political events. Franken apologized, saying, “I’ve met tens of thousands of people and taken thousands of photographs, often in crowded and chaotic situations. I’m a warm person; I hug people. I’ve learned from recent stories that in some of those encounters, I crossed a line for some women—and I know that any number is too many.” Another anonymous woman said that after she was a guest on Franken’s radio show in 2006, Franken leaned in toward her face during a handshake and gave her “a wet, open-mouthed kiss” on the cheek when she turned her face aside. The same day, Stephanie Kemplin, an army veteran, told CNN that Franken held the side of her breast for 5 to 10 seconds “and never moved his hand” while posing for a photograph with her during a 2003 USO tour in Iraq.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Franken#Sexual_misconduct_allegations