I refer to the letter What's so bad about US global hegemony?

From one perspective, the toppling of the Taliban and Baathist regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively by the US-led forces can be seen in positive light because the wars have effectively ended two reactionary and murderous regimes. However, the US is still not blameless or faultless.

The rise and consolidation of the Taliban was the result of the political irresponsibility of the US which, after the Afghan war against the Soviet occupation ended in 1989 with the pullout of the Soviet troops, simply walked away and abandoned the country allowing it to degenerate into anarchy.

The US also did nothing effective to stop Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from continuing to collaborate with the Taliban and making use of the latter as a surrogate to gain political influence and control of post-war Afghanistan.

We must also not forget that the Taliban, as a faction of the anti-Soviet 'mujahidden', was trained and armed by, among other countries, the US. In the process, the CIA also motivated the 'mujahidden' with fanatical and militant Islamism which was believed to be the psychological antidote to Soviet's 'godless' communism. Seen in this context, the US had reaped what it sowed.

In Iraq's case, the secular Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein was also an American ally in the latter's strategic response to the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Saddam deserves no sympathy because he was an opportunistic collaborator of the US in the 1980-1988 war against Iran which caused the deaths of millions of innocent Iranians as well as Iraqis.

One may argue that it was Iran which first fanned anti-Americanism in the wake of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. However, if we go further back into history, we surely cannot fail to see that Iranian anti-Americanism was, in fact, a reaction to America's gross interference into the Iran's internal affairs such as by assisting in the staging of a coup d'etat in 1953 and by supporting the oppressive Shah Reza Pahlavi regime from 1953 to 1978.

From these two examples, we can see that the US is not as benign and altruistic as some would like us to believe. Behind or beneath US's rhetoric of 'freedom' and 'democracy', 'human rights' are its national self-interests in securing cheap supplies of natural resources, opening up foreign markets for its goods and services and using some countries or groups as pawns to destabilise, control, influence or confront other countries and groups.

What's so bad about US global hegemony? It is essentially bad because it cannot thrive and prosper without having to create enemies all the time and also because it can befriend you at one moment and dump and vilify the next as an 'enemy of civilisation' when your strategic value has expired.