>>leave it in the worse state. that is because of half measures. The US policy was attempting to not be British where the "King" took and replaced completely

>>leave it in the worse state. that is because of half measures. The US policy was attempting to not be British where the "King" took and replaced completely the governance of the land / nation aka Colonization. That is one extreme The US took the other extreme were by we ripped out the government and replaced it with nothing leading to worse problems, or in the rare times we did attempt to replace it we replaced it with governance by committee, and not a Constitutional republic, more of a EU style parliament also leading to worse outcomes as parliamentary governance can only work with established societies not newly formed ones If instead if we would have put in-place actual constitutional republics under the doctrine of federalism for these nations I think there would have been far far far more successes and American would be seen more as a savoir than a conquer on the world stage today or included them as US Territories like Puerto Rico