Daily reminder that Boston Tea Party was illegal. If those people were properly punished then US wouldn't have got independence, and the world would've been a much better place.
It's not the colonized people that gained freedom, it's the colonizers who were freed from taxes so they could exploit more unregulated.
In this case it is between one imperialist country vs. another, so wouldn't label that position imperialistic necessarily.
I think the wars and revolutions to free countries from being colonized were never honorable (like all wars) even when they served a greater good in the large scheme. I even think that also applies to WW2 (Churchill famously said later they should have gone after USSR first), there is always some dirty stuff going on from all sides, and maybe it applies to the American revolution as well. These revolutions often spark from egoistic interests even if they claim to fight for the greater good.
My personal opinion, which wasn't stated yet, is that after a phase of lax regulation the problems become excessive, which leads to a larger part of the population to agree to a harder regime. After some time nobody remembers these things so it tends to become lax again. In other words I think this is going in circles, so I don't think we need to try it this time. Have a middle way and help thus who can't get off by themselves.