Quote Originally Posted by blueblood View Post
Brits and French had a much larger empires and Soviets were no less powerful than Americans. I hate to break it to you but Soviets were more popular in the third world but they were no match for American soft power.
Portugal -- among others -- also had a much larger Empire. The US with a few Pacific Islands, The Philippines for a bit and Puerto Rico in an ambiguous status do not constitute an empire in any sense. Most Americans my age are quite aware the USSR was more popular with the third world -- particularly those that wore Nehru jackets.

Dallas and Levi's ® trump Pravda. Who knew.
Jews were very hesitant in joining the forces in WW1 and too less in numbers. Hence, the resentment for Jews.
There was a bit more to it than that...
It's simple. You call animal control when a snake enters your home, but doesn't mean that animal control should set up a tent in front yard and wait for the next snake to enter.
Bad simile. For Korea, Animal Control was asked to stay -- and in the house, not in a tent outside.

In France, we didn't even stay in the yard -- except for the Cemetery plots.

We generally stay only where invited but I'll acknowledge we can be pushy about getting an invite on occasion.
Other concerned parties are equally responsible for the mess. As a citizen of a nation with faulty map lines, I can assure you that Nehru was equally responsible as Jinaah, Mountabatten and Mao.
No question. My reference to the KGB Retirees watching TV in Ekaterinburg was an acknowledgement of the truly outstanding job they did from the mid-20s until the late 80s of exploiting those fault lines. They did that exceptionally well.
Brits never came to liberate anyone, they came to conquer. But they did some good things too which includes social reforms, educational infrastructure and railways etc. Despite being the conquers, I have yet to find to an instance where drunk British soldiers wiped out an entire village of women and children. The most atrocious incident that took place in the Indian subcontinent was Jallianwala Bagh massacre. But even they never pulled off an Abu Gharib or Mai Lai, especially at the time when there was no such thing as human rights.
Let me remove the skipping about. Yes on the British and conquer / hold. Also yes on their generally better discipline and on their doing much good while they were there. Any Army the British trained is one to be reckoned with. Most are better trained and disciplined than is the US Army. So no quarrel on that aspect.

However, in addition to Jallianwala Bagh I think you could add Peshawar and, outside south Asia, several in Burma and Malaya -- without getting into the 1857 battles and aftermath.

I'm drawing a blank on the reference to drunk soldiers? If the implication was that US troops did that, certainly could've happened but I'm truly not recalling any at this time. If you mean in Korea or Viet Nam, there were incidents -- wars do that -- but not involving drunken troops. Poorly trained and disciplined, perhaps scared or exhausted, yes. Drunk, no.

Abu Gharaib we can agree was totally wrong and both the perpetrators and particularly their superiors deserved more harsh punishment than they got.

My Lai was wrong, no question, and numerically about on the scale of Peshawar, far fewer killed than at Amritsar -- unlike Peshawar, though, My Lai happened during a war rather than during peacetime thus it is more akin to the excesses of 1857-58 than to the others. That is not to excuse it, there is no excuse, simply to say the context is rather different.

There have always been human rights. Both the US and the British have long recognized that and both nations have done a better job of caring for them than have many others. Between the two, there are variances in approaches and both are improving as time passes. Still, I repeat my initial contention -- in spite of bumbling and stupidity, on balance we've done more good than harm. As you said:
Brits never came to liberate anyone, they came to conquer.
Other than the Philippines, we've avoided that. We just asked that one open ones markets...