Another hard stop at 1979. Go back a little further. (At least fake it.)
Was the coup in 1953 against "international laws and norms" or not?
How does the Greatest Country in the World come off holding other countries to a higher standard than we hold ourselves?
Don’t care.
I care about the fact that it happened in my lifetime in the largest portions of living generations
Otherwise you open that slippery slope to everything from asinine reparations to descendants of black American slaves to Mexico demanding we return the Southwestern United States to them, and the infinite variations that exist throughout all history in every land around the globe occupied by humans.
America has done more to help every country on Earth, probably in all of history, to free them and provide financial support when it is needed for everything from humanitarian to military, and has globally reduced the persistent burden of poverty all over the world that exists now, and has always existed in a greater degree than it does today.
That is how “the greatest Country in the World comes off”. That is how.
Because we are a nation governed by laws, run by humans, and humans are not infallible contrary to what Leftists (and some on Free Republic) like to imply. Evil, sin and error are built into us, and we try as a nation (or at least our Founders did) by taking that into account and accepting it. Leftists (and some on Free Republic) want to take the 10% of our history in which we SHOULD feel shame (such as the abandonment of South Vietnam and the betrayal of Chiang Kai-Shek at the end of WWII) and use that to say that exemplifies what is good in this country and what we stand for.
If you want to be part of that crowd and piously intone that 10% to paint our entire country and history with a blackened brush, I can’t help you with that.
But if you are an American citizen and you do that, you take the boundless opportunities this country has given you and generations before you (not to mention others all over the world who have benefited from our inbred generosity and largesse via the spread of freedom) then there is no reason for us to discuss this further.
You occupy the ground you feel you have, and I will occupy mine. I can face God with with the ground I occupy, even with its flaws.