This kind of opinion seems logical only if you don't look at history. I'm struggling to think of a government which is effective today but didn't have some horrible actions in the near past. At best I think you'll get functionally "minor" states like Switzerland or Denmark that weren't really in the powerful position the US was/is in.

And so it's much better to compare the US government's record with the record of other states, and in that comparison I think the US comes out reasonably well. Not the best, but certainly not the worst.

"Past performance is not indicative of future results"

The best way to figure out what someone's going to do in the future is looking at what they are doing now.

even then the swiss don't exactly have the cleanest record. There's a reason they're neutral and it isn't because they're morally superior