When US initiates aggressive unilateral military action on other sovereign countries, US bad yes, of course.
Old-school UN-led "police action" as in Korea is one thing, at least there's a somewhat universal institution making judgements on which countries need to be "saved" under a consistent legal framework, but that's such a slippery slope too.
The US does not have the authority to make such decisions and definitely does not have a good track record of them. It's just vigilantism at a large scale, at best. Even when being charitable about intent, the US did do some things in legitimate good faith, at least partially, the results are always catastrophic. There's been no instance of actually positive outcomes for the local population, it has always destroyed the country for decades to come and set the stage for significantly worse regimes.
No, that's not at all what I said, read it back please.
My point is that history has shown that such action is extremely counterproductive if you actually care about doing good for people under such regimes, particularly when the decision is made impulsively by a single country with a biased perspective and no consistent system or criteria to make sure it's a smart thing to do.
Anyone that supports such action is using inconsistent moralistic arguments to justify blatant power grabs. It may be well intentioned, but you are just making yourself feel good by fighting the bad guys, while doing even more harm to innocent people and making it all worse in the long-run. Very American indeed.
And frankly, right now, the US is not exactly in a position to be a judge of what is moral in the first place.
History has also shown dictators engaging is mass genocide like in Russia, Germany, China, Cambodia, RDC, etc. I am not sure that the idea that leaving dictators alone does less harm to their people is a lesson from history.
Read my comment back as well! I am saying this is neither a moral nor legal matter. So I am not using a moralistic argument.
Old-school UN-led "police action" as in Korea is one thing, at least there's a somewhat universal institution making judgements on which countries need to be "saved" under a consistent legal framework, but that's such a slippery slope too.
The US does not have the authority to make such decisions and definitely does not have a good track record of them. It's just vigilantism at a large scale, at best. Even when being charitable about intent, the US did do some things in legitimate good faith, at least partially, the results are always catastrophic. There's been no instance of actually positive outcomes for the local population, it has always destroyed the country for decades to come and set the stage for significantly worse regimes.