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Comment by aplummer | Hacker News Reader

...except for helping create the conditions to WW2, Vietnam, involvement in Afghanistan 1 and 2, Iraq war prison industrial complex (highest prisoner per capita in the world) war on drugs, supplying weapons to places like Saudi Arabia.

I agree that the USA has impacted many many lives very positively. I don’t think this extends to an overall net “peace and prosperity” claim.

I didn’t downvote FWIW

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None of those compare to Napoleon’s rampages or the subjugating of half the world by the British Empire. In the classical world raizing entire cities was not uncommon.

The population growth makes any comparison difficult. For example, the Napoleonic wars killed about the same amount of people as the Vietnam War.

As for razing entire cities, the Korean War saw the US essentially raze a country. To quote General LeMay

>We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too.

If you look at pictures of current wars, we still raise entire cities. Put 'Raqqa' in google image search for instance.

Are you holding the United States responsible for WW2? Your other points I'd say are minor compared to the stability and transfer of wealth that has risen post WW2 under the U.S. world leadership.

Minor? Read the numbers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

I don’t actually understand how you can even compare “transfer of wealth” and mass civilian casualties, let alone decide that the former is worth more.

The WW2 reference is a bit of a captain hindsight addition and easily the most controversial. I only said contributed, I would leave that out to make my point clearer next time.

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