History is written by the winners, I guess, and all that pro-US propaganda that's so proliferate in the entire western world seems to be working really good.
Did you know that the US supported Hitler at first and big US corporations (I.T.T., General Motors, DuPont, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Davis Oil Co., and the Chase National Bank) all continued trading with Germany during the war because there was money in it and the US politicians didn't want to give those big corporations a big sad?
The US is the "global peacekeeper" only when the target country they're invading doesn't want to go along with whatever the US wants. The UN is a whole lot more global peacekeeper than the US will ever be.
Yes, it is often coercive and we have certainly supported unsavory regimes. It is worth considering what the alternatives to those regimes are. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, the House of Saud is actually a moderating force keeping the Wahhabist mullahs from taking over completely. Liberal democracy will not work everywhere today, as our horribly misguided experiment in Iraq has demonstrated. I recommend Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom for a discussion of the problem, but a very short summary is that you cannot have a functioning democracy without substantial economic development (natural resource money does NOT count for many reasons) and a middle class that feels highly invested in stability, growth, and trade.
The US government never supported Hitler. America is a free country so of course there were many private individuals and companies who did. No different than how Western academia was extremely fond of the Soviets until the 1950s. The US actually provided massive aid to the allies before entering the war, through the lend lease program among others. The fact is that it wasn't clear at the time that it was in the United State's interests to oppose Hitler. It was a far away problem, there was a strong isolationist mood in the US, and even the Brits were trying their hand at coexisting with him.
For starters you're comparing different times, which is not even wrong, as they say. But actually the alternative to behaving as an aggressor is to behave "more decently" according to various standards, certainly differently; and that would not deter from any actual peacekeeping intentions and actions, to the contrary.
Compare to the hypothetical present times without sociopaths in power and conformists making excuses for them. And explain how "Pax Americana" and the foolhardy meddling in the Middle East go together. More like "peaceful munching sounds made by the wallets of some peeps, called FELLOW AMERICANS!!1 when convenient or cute, as an extraction device, not one one of them ever considering themselves as such".
There is no peace. There are people holding their ears, and there are people who will not unsee, ever. There's people who made their beds but pretend they will never have to sleep in them. But we cannot hide our own crimes behind those of others, ignorance does not protect from the consequences, lack of empathy does not protect from punishment. There is not a single history that is being written, what is swept under the rug today will be uncovered tomorrow, if there's ever going to be a day deserving the name.
> Compare to the hypothetical
It's invalid to compare the present with the past, but valid to compare the present with a present that never was?
If you disagree, make an argument against it without any such invalid comparisons [It doesn't matter if you say the word "compare", if you don't want to see the woods for all the trees you'll always find excuses anyway and I for one don't need to hear them] because otherwise, there isn't even anything there I need to argue against, and anything beyond pointing that out is just a bonus for someone who doesn't get or doesn't like the point to get hung up on, if you will. On HN it's usually silence or responses like that, bleh, look for the least generous reading, squirt out a one liner. Oh well, you do you.
Breckinridge Long is the very first name to prove that wrong. He was the US Secretary of State at the time Hitler was in power and gave Henry Ford permission to buy Nazi tanks while purposely preventing Jewish refugees from entering the US. He and Roosevelt also gave permission to the US companies I mentioned above to continue trading with Nazi Germany during war times.
For them, it wasn't so much about liberty and human rights as it was about business. That's still the case today. The US #1 trade partner is China, who happens to have a pathetic human rights record and is also still occupying Tibet. But opposing them in any way would be bad for business, so it gets shoved under the rug.
Out of sight, out of mind.
The idea that the US should stop doing business with China is ridiculous. As a major nuclear power with an economy that within in a decade or two could surpass ours in total output, America is in no position to do anything about China's internal affairs. Ending trade with China would cause extreme economic damage and internal unrest in the United States. It would be a phenomenally stupid sword for America to fall on.
You're right in general though. America's main interest after the security of ourselves and our allies is open and peaceful commerce between nations.
You got me with Roosevelt, though. I merely mentioned him for completeness sake, not to single him out. That was badly worded on my part.