We need less Chemo and Surgery and more "Voom."

[ganulv]

I can read French.
Can you point me at a francophone source, not suspicious of being partial to your view by birth, telling us that the colonists were an important and positive influence on the French Revolution? Or maybe a German one. Dutch? Spanish?

I suppose there are some, but I doubt they would provide substantial food for a list of the U.S.' good deeds.

I think you have decided already, so why go to the trouble?

The stuff where one can really claim to have helped mankind advance is usually about ideas; philosophy and science mostly. That's overwhelmingly the product of individuals (hardly practical any more in many sciences) who either worked for profit or were employed to first and foremost bring forward their own country.

Did I or did I not specifically point out that I was speaking of philosophy in my post above?

[Fuchs]

I think you have decided already, so why go to the trouble?

There's no real reason to. Sometimes people discuss because they like to express their opinion, without an actual chance to convince the other participant(s) consciously.

It's actually a quite common style of discussion.

[ganulv]

It's actually a quite common style of discussion.

Discussion?

[Bob's World]

As they say, "there are no clean hands" in this business of being a powerful state that seeks to exercise interests abroad.

Some go in with the intent to get their hands dirty, or not caring, others do so inadvertently, but all get dirty.

These countries also tend to logically prioritize their own interests in determining what outcomes they seek to promote. The US is no different in that regard.

Where we differ is that we define as interests (particularly in the post Cold War era) broad concepts of promoting US leadership, US values and US democracy. I understand the attractive logic and good intentions behind why those "interests" made their way into our national security strategy, but I disagree with them very much and believe they actually lead us more often to do things that put our historic interests at risk, rather than make them more secure.

Having good intentions is better than having bad intentions, but the nuance of one's intentions are typically lost on a popualce that finds themself on the reciving end of the actual engagement. There is, after all, no such thing as "friendly fire."

(Oh, and the French very much bought into a form of the ideals of democracy developed during the American experience. The French also took those ideals on the road to "share" with "liberated" populaces in places such as Egypt and Spain and, like the US today, were always surprised when their well intended efforts were met with powerful resistance insurgencies from those recently liberated oppressed people.)

[Dayuhan]

Having good intentions is better than having bad intentions, but the nuance of one's intentions are typically lost on a popualce that finds themself on the reciving end of the actual engagement. There is, after all, no such thing as "friendly fire."

Also worth remembering that anything we do, including nothing, is going to piss somebody off, sometimes to the point of violence. It's worth asking, in any given case, whether we've pissed off "a populace" or a small fraction of a populace that has a powerful vested interest in pursuing a certain agenda.

If we're looking for a policy that will please everybody and assure that everybody loves us and nobody hates us, we might as well give up from the start, because no such thing can exist.