Let me start with Korea.
I’ll say neither because China got directly involved in combat.
Vietnam - you really have to ask?
Gulf war - again neither because it was a multinational effort.
Afghanistan up until we reportedly let (Bush did) bin Laden escape, good. After that point, again - you have to ask?
And stop prevaricating - it’s not “Gulf War2”, it’s the Iraq war and it is worse than Vietnam.
No need to keep trying to convert me - I firmly believe America has been an imperialistic power most of my life and trust me, people I am close to, respect and trust have tried and failed. You’ve got no shot.
The only war I’ll ever view as “good” is one where you fight for your own survival, not to impose your will or way of life on others who don’t threaten your survival. Or to make certain people richer.
I appreciate your thoughtful reply.
As for American imperialism, I do not know of any war America has waged that has been imperialist. Germany and Japan today are free, sovereign, and independent states. As is South Korea. Vietnam is as well, even though their level of internal "freedom" is debatable and they ended up taking a different route than the people in the south would have chosen. Iraq is also sovereign and generally independent, even if not internally "free." On the other hand, if the U.S. waged a war for oil, the U.S. has not secured an exclusive oil contracts that I know of. Afghanistan is a basket case that will never be free by the standards of western liberal democracy, and will not be completely sovereign of independent because the government is so corrupt. Again, if the U.S. is acting as an imperial power, the U.S. does not seem to be garnering an imperial share of the resources of that country.
The only real imperial wars the United States have waged are internal ones to create internal colonies: the long-term wars waged against Native Americans ("The only good Indian is a dead Indian.") so white people could settle on their lands and (dare I say it?) the South.
Apologists for the Union war effort had this to say about the war against the South:
Parson Brownlow was a pro-Union Methodist from east Tennessee.
Unionist Parson Brownlow said:
If I had the power, I would arm and uniform in the Federal habiliments every wolf and panther and catamount and tiger and bear in the mountains of America; every crocodile in the swamps of Florida and South Carolina; every negro in the Southern Confederacy, and every devil in hell, and turn them on the rebels in the South, if it exterminated every rebel from the face of God’s green earth – every man, woman and child south of Mason and Dixon’s line. ...We will crowd the rebels into the Gulf of Mexico, and drown the entire race, as the devil did the hogs in the Sea of Galilee. [‘applause’]
Brownlow said:
I would divide your army into three grand divisions. Let the first be armed and equipped as the law requires, will small arms and artillery. Let them be the largest division, and do the killing. Let the second division be armed with pine torches and spirits of turpentine, and let them to the burning! Let the third and last division be armed with surveyors’ compasses and chains, that will survey the land and settle it with loyal people.
Reverend George B. Bacon was a Congregationalist minister.
Reverend Bacon said:
I would call for two millions of volunteers. I would form them four deep, their right upon the slope of the Alleghenies, and their left upon the margin of the sea, with bayonets fixed I would order them to march and drive every man who would not shoulder his musket and join this advancing host into the Gulf of Mexico.
That sounds like fairly standard nineteenth century imperialism: kill the inhabitants and take their land.
United States imperialism vis-a-vis the Indians speaks for itself.
