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.