[ahelwer]

American moral authority has been dead since the Vietnam war, if not the Korean war. The sheer quantity of war crimes committed was astonishing. Most people know about My Lai, but that was just an incident which managed to break through into American awareness - it wasn't unusual, it was more like the norm.

Nobody ever faced consequences for any of it.

I gotta be honest, the idea that things like this "damage American moral authority" is just such a purely America-centric view. Americans truly have no idea how they are perceived by the rest of the world. Across the globe, polls consistently show America is viewed as the greatest threat to world peace.

[eplanit]

And yet more than a million people migrate here every year. They must not be good students of history.

[jacquesm]

That has nothing to do with it. Economic migration does not say anything about the moral authority of the USA, it mainly says that the USA is better off economically than many other places in the world (not in the least because of the mess the USA is creating in some of those countries).

[ahelwer]

Which side of a gun do you want pointed at you?