If you start with US are bad guys and it would have been better for Hitler to be in power or Russia or imperialist Japan then I'd love to learn about your ideal worldview. Most of those wars were a counterweight to Russia taking over countries.

Free trade gave you cheap clothes, food and gadgets. The US isn't exploiting poorer countries those countries want to sell their goods and services. They are cheaper only because wages/costs are higher here (plus transport). Going back to tariffs is a productivity drop globally and a way to keep poorer countries down.

So here I disagree. You list a number of wars that turned out to be disasters, and in hindsight were possibly a bad idea to get involved in. But I see you missed off Korea - a very bloody war, which however cemented a free(ish) South Korea. I'd imagine present day South Koreans are quite glad to not be under Kim Jong Sun's thumb. Had the Vietnam war succeeded, would we see it similarly?

As for Iraq wars, terrible as they turned out to be, I see a kernel of wanting to contain, then remove, a really awful tyrant. That Hussein was terrible seems to be beyond any question. Alas, the medicine was perhaps more bitter than the disease.

I think it's just hard to be the world's policeman, and maybe you get even most things wrong. That in itself doesn't mean you're a bad guy. I'm not defending the outcomes, just to be clear.

As for America as "the bad guys"... It seems you don't live in a country neighboured by a proper baddie. At worst, I would say that the worst, most terrible, isolated atrocities of the American wars of last 30 years perhaps match the daily reality of what Russia does in Ukraine.

176k people in Afghanistan died during the war[1]. Up to 1 million died due to the Iraq war[2]. We left almost all of Korea and Vietnam completely destroyed after those wars.

The US has actually has been at war for nearly every year of its existence[3]. I find it really hard not to consider America "the bad guys".

I don't think there are "proper baddies" though. The US acts just as much of a baddie as any other country. Every country will do what it wants to advance its interests (especially a superpower)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_war... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

So, for one, I'm not arguing the outcomes of these wars was good. Rather, that (a) the intentions may well have been good, and also (b) we would really need to compare to the counterfactual of these wars not happening in the first place. Then there are also mitigating circumstances.

Vietnam wasn't started or even fanned up by the US, but rather by the French. The US "inherited" an awful situation. And lest we forget, North Vietnamese did awful purges to the South Vietnamese after the war.

Afghanistan to me is the least ambiguous of them, at least in the early years. US was attacked by a terrorist unit, given official shelter in Afghanistan, whose government also refused to give them up. Not just that, but the propped up regime did things we care about as good. Since NATO withdrawal the Taliban brought thei own variety of peace and associated poverty, and it's not particularly good either. Sure, not a deadly war, but not exactly a niceout come either.

Time and time again the West, lead by the US, faces the nasty choice between seeing evil be done and standing by, or intervening, by means of war, to protect some notion of goodness. And yes, mostly this failed - and maybe the lesson is, don't get involved. But I don't think it's a straightforward a priori obvious thing.

Oh, and if you say there are no "baddie" countries, that just means you aren't familiar with being invaded by one. It's not immutable in time, tables turn etc. But just read up for 2 mins about say Russian atrocities in Ukraine and you may well think warmly of the other wars.

The US absolutely chose to get involved in the Vietnam war. The US could have easily just stayed out of it and let North Vietnam conquer South Vietnam from the start. That's what ultimately happened but a million Vietnamese could have kept their lives.

It was also insane that the US was paying France billions before the war in order to help them maintain their Vietnamese colony. We usually consider colonial powers to be "the baddies".

We should never have invaded Afghanistan. If we wanted to kill the Al-Qaeda leaders then we should have sent the CIA or special forces (which is what we ultimately did). The Taliban did not attack us. We might not like how the Taliban runs the country but we have no business in invading a sovereign country over that. Invading other countries is usually a baddie move.

I think its absolutely straight forward. Just don't start offensive wars if you really think you aren't one of the baddies.

Those past wars included millions of casualties and tons of atrocities. You don't want to be invaded by a baddie and you definitely don't want to be invaded by the US!

Maybe you know more about the history of South Korea, but the time between the USAMGIK and the Sixth Republic, but calling South Korea free - even "-ish"- sounds like a stretch.

The Fifth Republic was a military dictatorship that promised democratic reforms that never materialized. The June 29 Declaration specifically called for the holding of direct presidential elections and restoration of civil rights - two items which I argue having been suspended until then is remarkably un-free.

I don't think this should be downvoted. I don't know anything about the post-war history of Korea, but your comment led me to look it up, and according to Wikipedia, between 1948 and 1987, South Korea was ruled by a succession of corrupt authoritarian elected governments and military dictatorships.

Not a great triumph of America's professed values, but consistent with America's actual support for anti-communist dictators around the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Republic_of_Korea

My point of reference is North Korea. I don't know much about SK internal politics, but I know which one I'd rather live in.

Can't we choose any country to compare it to NK and say it's free?

I have standards and they say that living under a dictator with civil rights suspended isn't free even if the neighbor is worse. What are your standards?

"I think it's just hard to be the world's policeman..."

What some people call being the "world's policeman," I call being a bully. The USA only occupies such a role by having the most weapons and the most money. The USA its military and economic might to further strengthen its power, not to mete out justice. And when I say "USA," I don't just mean the government, but also the biggest corporations. Sometimes it's in the best of the USA, Coca-Cola, Facebook, and Raytheon that people live, and sometimes its in their interest that people die. Some people get to live very comfortable lives, and some people must live in squalor. Those countries that buy fighter jets and McDonald's tend to earn the USA's favor, and those that do not are forces into compliance or brutally punished. Cuba wanted to nationalize its oil industry in the 60s, and the Cuban trade embargo began (and has lasted ever since). The USA will describe it as fighting authoritarian dictators or whatever, but its all about whether a nation will agree to play by the USA's rules of capitalism or not.

Proponents of the USA and capitalism like to tout it as the most morally superior system in the world so far devised, but it is no coincidence that the richest country in the world also has the largest military in the world. The USA maintains its position by violence.

I think you're exposing the problem with neo-liberalism and why the USA are the bad guys. It's not our role to impose our (meaning the establishment's) will on other people. We should not be "spreading" our ideals or way of life. That's colonialism. That's why the USA are the bad guys.

A thing that's often missed often these days in the Hussein narrative is that the US liked him when they helped empower him and he was doing what the US wanted, but they didn't like him when he wasn't aligned anymore.

This is pretty typical, which defies simple categorization. Most stuff makes more sense when you stop trying to fit the US into "good guy" or "bad guy" boxes, and try something more like "powerful, and powerfully self interested". It's more neutral than a lot of Americans are comfortable, but probably more empirical.

Agree trying to draw equivalence to US, and as you put it "a proper baddie" is silly. There aren't that many "proper baddies though", and the US has a decidedly mixed record on opposing vs. defending them.

Not dropping nukes would have resulted in way more casualties. It was a calculated decision to minimize loss of life, not be an evil enemy.

I agree in principle but have always wondered if a purely military target could have been chosen, at least for the first demonstration. Something like a military port or base.

After that it could have been made clear that arms manufacturing centers may be targeted next, followed by political centers.

(They did not know we had only two bombs and would need time to make more.)

As far as I know the reasoning was that the Japanese public would have to see it, but I wonder if a suitable military target on the mainland could have been found that would have minimized civilian casualties while being impossible for the regime to hide.

> The world is complicated, but I honestly believe that last 70 years or so of geopolitics makes more sense if I start with the assumption that the USA are "the bad guys."

The world makes more sense if you assume there are no good and bad guys, but just self-interested actors. USA does good things when it benefits them but also bad things when it benefits them. Same with everyone else, usa just is slightly more incentivized to take a soft power approach.

if you want to talk about US evils in ww2 i think it makes more sense to emphasize the firebombing of tokyo rather than the atomic bombs. they were way worse, and curtis lemay famously said he expected to be tried for war crimes if the us lost the war

(the dresden bombing was also quite bad but i'm not sure how they compare)

You’re just jumping on the anti American bandwagon. It’s a cold dark forest. Conflict and self interest are immutable characteristics of humankind. You act as if we’re the only nation who’s ever committed acts of violence.

There’s no objective “good guys” or “bad guys.”