@ Saskia Well that puts a new slant on things and conflicts with what I have always been told. Goes to show, that we can all learn something new every day 
I am condoning everything my Country has done post WW2 but I do know this.....someone had to play world traffic cop and by default we were elected. And when you're the cop you're going to make enemies. And do dumb things. There's a whole bucket list of dumb things. But I do know this...if it weren't for a little incident in a certain harbor on a certain Pacific island you all would be speaking Deutsch today.
Where and when was this election, and who voted in it?
You really need to read up on the US and British interference in the affairs of the Middle East starting from the beginning of last century, our combined actions in that part of the world were nothing to do with policing or keeping the peace and all about our respective nation's self interests. One cannot claim that British military intervention to build a British Middle Eastern empire that endured from 1914 to 1956 was a 'police action'. Similarly one cannot claim that overthrowing regimes that are not to your own country's taste, often democratically elected ones, as 'police actions', vis Americas actions that led to the overthrow of the democratic government in Iran to be replaced with the autocratic regime of the Shah, a country that, when neutral in WWII was the subject of an Anglo-Soviet invasion in 1941. (And people wonder why Iranians are pissed off at the west.)
Britain's part in the Middle East is often downplayed in the history we're taught, because it suits us to conveniently forget how big a hand we had in the mess that the Middle East became. Britain formally ruled:
Egypt from 1882 to 1956
Iraq from 1921 to 1932
Palestine from 1920 to 1948 (occupied since 1917)
and occupied, by military force, many other bits on and off over the years.
There's lots of scope there for legitimate resentment to build up, and none of it is to do with 'policing' wrongdoers.
Oh, and isn't the 'We won WWII' line getting a little thin? WWII started in 1939 and you lot, despite many invitations, didn't turn up until Dec 8th 1941, rather more than a day late and a dollar short. My father had been fighting for over two years and got seriously wounded (and back into the fight) before a single American soldier picked up a weapon. By then the British had fought and won the Battle of Britain, been fighting in North Africa for a year and a half, and the Russians had been at it since the summer. So, yes, you helped, but it wasn't just your lot who won it.
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