Yea, I generally am a bigger fan of what the US does just by being there than I am of our actual interventions in places which can frequently be seen as short sighted, bloody, and against our own principles at times.

But from a world composed of far more people that those in Chile, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, and South America. I think we've done a decent job overall from a historical perspective of promoting a fairly stable world during Pax Americana. With quite a few missteps along the way.

My point isn't that it's perfect, my point is that... all things considered, for a really large amount of the world's population, things aren't _that bad_ given historical context.

Sure, the child laboring to make phones in China isn't going to wax poetic about the wonders of Pax Americana. But my point is more... child labor was only more frequent in histories past.

Sure the murdered wedding goers in Afghanistan won't be happy about the state of affairs but civilians dying erroneously during combat operations has been a near constant in world history and at this point you're less likely to die in that manner than ever before.

You could argue that it's a result of larger populations but I'm not certain about that given Kazakhstan; Syria; China in Xianjiang, Hong Kong, the S China Sea, and Taiwan; Russia in Georgia, Crimea, and the rest of Ukraine; Myanmar; basically the entire Middle East.

It's easy to talk about how bad the USAF is, they've done a lot of bad shit over the years, my impression is it's still better than the alternative.

In a vacuum, someone will step in, and that someone as of now is China and/or Russia.

The US is certainly no saint, but I think someone(s)? have said that considering the alternatives *, you could do a lot worse.

* Realistic alternatives that is. I too would love to see us achieve world peace and ditch all weapons. But that's probably never going to happen as long as humans are not extinct.

Wasn’t the military which overthrew democratic governments though. It was the CIA.

This is a pretty important delineation.

They dont also fall under the DOD? (I am not a US citizen, genuine question)

Also want to echo sentiments about roaming profiles and how annoying they can be.

You would hope so, but they report to the director of national intelligence (a member of the president's cabinet) and are not a subdivision of the DOD. They infamously have their own budget, funded by their own means, and have somewhat of a rivalry with other parts of the government. The Department of National intelligence is the DOD's version of the CIA.