Quote Originally Posted by CaptCleghorn View Post
I believe America will have a varied label in parts of its history regarding whether or not it's a good guy or a bad guy. Just looking at the last half century, we've seen considerable shifts in judgment on many parts of history. There will, of course, be some resume padding by the winners, but there will also be a recognition of flaws and mistakes.
I don't hear many good things about the Imperialist period at the transition from the 19th to the 20th centuries, nor the Banana Wars (which is really just a more specific part of the former). The best things I hear from those are how the careers of important generals started during them. Pershing was Governor of the Philippines and did probably the best job of anyone who had to manage the area before (and many since) - largely by a series of reforms that gave agency to them. Chesty Puller commanded a squad in Haiti and was also successful, partly from his willingness to listen to the non-white people under his command. Those commanders who came in thinking to 'civilize those savages' or other such nonsense always seemed to do poorly.

And neither of those was something I was taught in schools, but from documentaries I saw after - with the bits on Pershing being covered under multiple programs.