Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
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.
He he, I prefer Wrangler, they use better fabric.. As I said, Nehru jacket or not, Soviet policy of "Worker's paradise" fits perfectly when helping out with infrastructure in the third world.

[Portuguese and Spaniards were bad bad people.]

There was a bit more to it than that...
This is what Hitler told in Mein Kampf.

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. 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.Let me remove the skipping about.
Maybe. France was a different case though. Unlike Korea, they were not in the habit of being a colony and their hate for English speakers is very much visible, even today. You do remember the France-NATO drama, right.

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 never knew about the Peshawar incident. I guess our Pak hating politicians and bureaucrats did a fine job in neglecting that part from our history books.
I will have to study it first before commenting on it.

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.
I read it somewhere, given time I might be able to recall it. But we agree on Abu Gharib and My Lai. Amritsar was the result of a single madman and I have yet to learn about Peshawar.

1857 - the supposed "First freedom struggle", had nothing to do with freedom but was a conflict between handful of Indian princely states and the East India Company, just like the wars that took place earlier during the conquest. AFAIK, these wars and conflicts were fought in the battlegrounds except Delhi. Aside from the blurbs of a few right wing historians (both Indian and British), not much info is available, at least not to my recollection, but I could be wrong.

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:Other than the Philippines, we've avoided that.
Well, then you have much to learn about the Muslim conquests around the world and some of them could be as recent as Cyprus. I never said that Americans sucked at this but the proclamation of being the best is a bit hard to digest. As for the Philippines, I am not the one to judge as Americans are fairly popular in that country.

We just asked that one open ones markets...
And you have yet to open a McDonalds in North Korea. Kim Jong Il is forced to import burgers. True story.