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Originally Posted by Timjw100
In your opinion, when has the US ever done anything good in the world?
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We do lots of good things around the world...
First of all, we give more to the UN than any other country. Contrary to popular belief, 90+% of what the UN does has nothing to do with peace-keeping or military ventures. Organizations such as UNICEF do tons of good around the world. Whenever there are terrible wars, like the ones in Africa during the 1990s, the UN delivers relief supplies and opens refugee camps to help displaced people. Back in the winter of 2001 when we invaded Afghanistan, the UN helped to feed hundreds of thousands of people who would have otherwise starved to death. A good share of the money that pays for all of that, and a good share of the actual supplies themselves, comes courtesy of the United States.
We are also usually the first country to give aid in the event of natural disasters, and we usually send relief workers to help in whatever the situation is. At least this was the case during msot of the 20th Century.
We have launched more satellites into orbit than any other country, by far, and these satellites are used by countries throughout the world. Without them, television and other communications would not be the same.
The "blame America crowd" (as you call them) only objects to military actions. The purpose of the military is to kill, and some of us object to killing as a general principle. Obviously a military is needed to defend the country from foreign attack. But unfortunately that is not what our military has been used for over the past 60 years. Instead, it has been used to secure (i.e. steal, conquer) natural resources, overthrow governments, and in general to pursue a policy of forcing the rest of the world to alter their economies to our "free market" capitalism model regardless of whether or not the people of these places want this type of system.
The purpose of the military should have nothing to do with pursuing economic policy and should be for defense purposes only. Just as is the case with 99% of the countries on the planet, we should not have a single soldier outside of our borders except when they are needed for a UN action.
It's funny how we have military bases in over 130 countries, but when any other country on the planet moves some of their soldiers to another country, even when they are invited by that government, our leaders cry foul, even when that country is their next-door neighbor.