As someone from a country neighboring Poland, I am very familiar with this reactionary mindset and find it disgusting. (Poland seems to be in a very reactionary period right now in general.) - Yes, we were part of the USSR, which was responsible for many crimes, but that doesn't mean we now need to be unsophisticated U.S. bootlickers incapable of looking at each individual situation and evaluating it on its own merits.

For example, it is easy to see how the U.S. would not tolerate the sort of of military exercises done near the borders of Iran off the coast of Mexico. But somehow when U.S. does it, it's fine. Same with the recent airliner disaster, which took Iran 3 days to admit to, longer than it should have, but the smug coverage from U.S. media completely omits any discussion of the U.S. taking 7 years(!) to admit to a similar disaster.

Hard to argue the Iraq War was any good, same for Libya, or the sponsoring of fundamentalists in Syria, in fact the American relationship with gulf monarchies, or even Israel, is hardly based on any moral principles.

The record in Latin America is too long to even get into etc. etc.

"...but the smug coverage from U.S. media completely omits any discussion of the U.S. taking 7 years(!) to admit to a similar disaster." If you are referring to flight 665 in 1988 you are wrong. Crash on July 3, here a reaction on july 4: ""The U.S. government deeply regrets this incident," Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference." https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/flight8...

"In 1996, (~7years), the governments of the U.S. and Iran reached a settlement at the International Court of Justice which included the statement "... the United States recognized the aerial incident of 3 July 1988 as a terrible human tragedy and expressed deep regret over the loss of lives caused by the incident ..."[16] As part of the settlement, even though the U.S. government did not admit legal liability or formally apologize to Iran" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

There's also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10qatUWwIeg

But the US admitted within a day that it was one of their ships that shot down the plane. Compare that to next day of the recent crash when an iranian official posted on the next day that it was scientifically impossible to have been an iranian missile. But at least they think they have arrested the person who posted the video showing the crash and making the cause obvious. "On 14 January it was announced that Iranian authorities had arrested the person who had published a video of the aircraft being shot down." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51114945

Except the U.S. never formally apologized, which you conveniently glance over. Iran did. The background is also important, which is an illegal U.S. assassination of a top Iranian general.

It is true that some U.S. officials admitted the mistake quickly, however the official position of the U.S. government was defiant for 7 years. The official position of the Iranian government was apologetic within 72 hours and cooperative with Ukraine even faster. That's despite the fact that the U.S. homeland wasn't threatened or encircled by Iran, whereas the U.S. constantly maneuvers around Iranian borders and the tense situation came about because of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani by the U.S., while on an officially accredited diplomatic mission(!)

I don't agree with arresting the person who posted the video for sure, but neither do I agree with the torture of Chelsea Manning for exposing U.S. war crimes, prosecution of WikiLeaks, Snowden, treatment of African-Americans by law enforcement, violent treatment of Standing Rock protesters etc. We could go on forever.

The point is when you have the leader of a world superpower like the U.S. saying that he'll never apologize for the United States of America, "no matter what the facts are", when none of U.S. presidents have been prosecuted for war crimes, when the indiscriminate use of devastating sanctions, including on medicine, leads to devastating civilian outcomes, when the U.S. uncritically lets Israel carve progressively more and more of the West Bank, when you have the U.S. President threatening Europe and openly admitting to stealing Syrian oil, then maybe the U.S. does not have any moral superiority to lecture others.

And let me be clear, I don't want to see the U.S replaced by say China either, I want it to be counterbalanced, so that no outrageous actions on the international stage can be taken by either party. I'd love to see the EU be its own player as well.

The pipeline thing is easy to evaluate. It clearly gives Russia more leverage over East block countries. Now look who oppose it and who pushes it and you will know who our ally is. Doing huge business deal that destabilizes the region while having sanctions over Russia invading part of Ukraine is just big betrayal. We can't count on Germany helping us. The only big player left who is interested is US. Additional bonus is that they have proven throughout history that they are acually capable of doing something.

Why should I care if they would tolerate military presence in Mexico. I care about stability and safety of my country and our region. It's clear Germany is not our ally here while US at least does something.

The pipeline thing is easy to evaluate. It clearly gives Russia more leverage over East block countries. Now look who oppose it and who pushes it (while having high ranked politicans accepting lucrative positions paid by Russians) and you will know who our ally is. Doing huge business deal that destabilizes the region while having sanctions over Russia invading part of Ukraine is just big betrayal. We can't count on Germany helping us. The only big player left who is interested is US. Additional bonus is that they have proven throughout history that they are acually capable of doing something.

Why should I care if they would tolerate military presence in Mexico. I care about stability and safety of my country and our region. It's clear Germany is not our ally here while US at least does something.

>Without big bully to prevent countries doing deals that decrease stability in other countries we have no recourse.

The problem here is that many do argue right now that the US is doing this themselves and is a large factor in lots of instability in say the middle East.