Just Western civilization? How about this: all civilizations throughout history grew and prospered by exploiting “weaker” people and countries! Few and far between are the instances of a great civilization that rose to power or maintained power without subduing and exploiting others, and this is true of the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Chinese, the Mongols, the Turks, the Incas and Aztecs, and of course, the Europeans and Americans as well (and that’s a very abbreviated list). So let’s not single out the West for your excoriation.

With that proviso, I agree with some of what you wrote. There are probably many in power who do this kind of stuff knowingly and intentionally, who personally profit off of interference and plunder because of the way they are connected to powerful businesses and other interests. Perhaps there are some idealistic fools among our politicians who truly believe they are spreading democracy and freedom or who really think they’re protecting America by making the world “safe for democracy,” as the phrase goes. But these idealists are probably greatly outnumbered by the politicians who have more “personal” motivations for what they’re doing.

So, to use one of my examples, the American overthrow of the democratically elected leftist government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in the 1950s and installation of the Western-friendly Shah was a direct consequence of the fact that Mossadegh was trying to nationalize the oil of Iran (and, thus, deprive American business interests of a lucrative market). Under your definition, then, this wouldn’t be a “mistake,” but rather, an intentional and conscious act. The reason I’m calling it a mistake, however, is that it resulted in the Islamic Revolution (which completely closed off Iran as a market for anything and drove Iran into the Soviet — now, Russian — orbit), and I don’t think that was at all the ideal outcome these American policymakers had in mind. The same is true for many of their acts of interference. There are all sorts of unintended consequences like that. So, I think in your remarks, you give the powers-that-be too much credit in assuming that they actually know what they’re doing, whereas I think the reality is that in many instances, they don’t know but simply don’t care about the long-term consequences because they’re thinking about short-term profit of one sort or another; it’s exactly the kind of short-term thinking that led to the 2007 financial crisis, in other words.

In any event, whether you call these interventionist policy decisions “mistakes” or see them in a more sinister light matters less to me than the notion that we need to be opposing these kinds of instances of interference in the domestic politics of foreign nations. John McCain, who is often held out as some sort of maverick hero, is a senile, blundering fool or else a sinister profiteer, and I don’t really care which characterization of him is closer to the truth. Either way, we should be opposing him and those like him who want to lead this nation into more costly international conflicts that end up being disastrous for the nations we bully and bomb and, ultimately, for American taxpayers and citizens here at home.