This statement is also incorrect when referred to several key places the US have picked over the years (e.g. Pinochet's Chile or Syngman Rhee / Park Chung-Hee's Korea), and of course looking at the constant heavy military occupation of several "allied" countries, a fact without precedents in history, rather than the fable of "exporting democracy" this just looks like version 2.0 of the British Empire :)
Germany and Japan, though, got heavily de-industrialised and there was a conscious plan to bring the living standards to a much lower level than they used to be. Patents also got seized, and in general Germany and Austria did not recover their pre-WW2 prestige, even, for instance, in terms of the "new Heisenbergs and Schrödingers", which never came.
That's a strange way to talk about carpet bombing and chemical weapons. Besides, the US lost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Saigon
"The Vietnamese government officially calls it the "Day of liberating the South for national reunification" (Vietnamese: Giải phóng miền Nam, thống nhất đất nước) or "Liberation Day" (Ngày Giải Phóng)"
.. I don't think the Vietnamese democratic government thanks you for it.
It's widely accepted that the US made seriously grave mistakes.
> Besides, the US lost
I was attempting to phrase it as the US supporting values or institutions that would eventually lead to democracy, not that US support means it will win.
> I don't think the Vietnamese democratic government thanks you for it.
They don't obviously and we ended up with the worst of all outcomes. It would've been better for the Vietnamese people if there was never any civil war, even better if the US hadn't supported the South. But, best of all for the Vietnamese people would've been if the South had won. One look at the GDP difference between Vietnam and Korea would create some serious introspection on that scenario. To save you some time, it's $47,000 to $12,000 PPP.
Also I'm not sure what you mean by "social welfare".
Refugees that Europe deals with is mostly Syrian and Afghani. The US supplied weapons and support to Syrian rebels and weapons to anti-communist mujahideen. Now, hindsight is 20/20, but Assad was literally using chemical weapons on Syrian citizens. The Taliban was wantonly wreaking destruction across Afghanistan causing the refugee displacement. These are complex issues when it comes to human rights abuses and geopolitics. My point is that the US paid a price in attempting to be world police, regardless of the outcome. It wasn't economically beneficial as the grandparent comment stated.
People in US are free to vote any party that they wanted. They supported the people that spends trillions in the army instead to vote for other options.
If you have presidents that despised healthcare, expressed publicly their preference for the uneducated ones, and loathed the poor, the disabled and the non-white, well... this is what you asked for. Deal with it.
If you have presidents that spend trillions in the army and you don't want it, choose presidents with other priorities.
I'm really sorry, but please don't blame Europe for that.
EDIT: spelling
Yeah, maybe for the population of those countries and the US budget. But think of all the military suppliers, they must be very happy!
You may want to look up who installed the Taliban in the first place.
