“Past empires were even worse” is not much consolation if the US uses its economic might to drive your country to ruin and your countrymen to unemployment and starvation, trains and arms paramilitary soldiers to come rape and massacre your neighbors, bombs your village to rubble, props up the autocratic military dictatorship ruling your country, etc.

There are dozens of countries and millions of lives around the world which US military/foreign policy has left in ruins.

Which is not to say that the US is any worse than other global powers, or that a world where the US was completely isolationist would necessarily be better. But its hardly the force for divine progress and prosperity that we Americans often pretend it is to ourselves.

> They may look and feel the same from outside

This isn't as comforting as you seem to think it is, when you're talking to people on the outside.

the good old "i only shot you once when all those people would have shot you 3 times" defense.

Ironic comparison given that the British Empire banned slavery before the American Civil War.