Make America (the) Good Guys (Again?)

Without a doubt, I have been to more parts of the world than most others - especially those from the United States. I can also say that I've seen different parts of the world in a way that those who have traveled have seen it. Of course, my travels have similarity to other people who have served in the military, yet also different than even them.

What is with the title that I used 'Make America (the) Good Guys (Again?)? Yes, it's a play on the MAGA acronym, but rest assured that it is not the same. It's MAGGA (with a question about the 'A'). Maybe when it all comes out, there is no "Again". We like to think we are the Good Guys, but what country does the average citizen not think that they are a good people. Think of a country that we tend to think is a bad country. Let's go with Libya. I've never been there, but if I had money to bet, I would bet that the average citizen isn't much different than us. They sleep at night, wake in the morning, go to work, and do what they must to take care of their families. Essentially, we are the very same people.

I said earlier that I've traveled quite a bit. I spent a year in the Sinai and actually got to know some of the local citizens in a little town named El Arish. This town is on the coast along the southwest part of the Mediterranean Sea. I used to go to different restaurants, and they actually started to recognize me and know exactly what I would order. It's a habit that people start to pick up on here in this country. It's just one of many similarities. I used to go to this marketplace and some of the same shops. They were some of the most down-to-earth people that you'd ever want to meet.

I spent some months in Saudi Arabia in 1990 and 1991. You'd see Saudi men, and most were friendly and wanted to talk. Heck, I wanted to talk with them too. I've met thousands of Americans over the course of my life, but few people from that part of the world. When we visit friends and family in this country, what do we talk about? Sports sometimes. Other times we talk about family - children mostly. It's a thing that ever culture is proud of and it's something that we all have in common. I remember this one Saudi that I spoke with. He said, "do you have wife?". I said, "yes, I do". He said, "you have children?". I told him that I had child. He said, "do you have son?". I said, "No, I have a daughter that's almost a year old". The disappointment in his voice was evident. The culture there does place a higher value on having a son than a daughter. I wouldn't necessarily say that's a bad thing. We all know that a son carries the family name, whereas a girl loses it by marriage. So, we think we are different, but even in America most of us want a son at some point.

I say all of that to drive home the point that we are basically all the same. People across the world are good - and I'm not saying sinless, but we all desire to be considered a good man or woman.

But countries are made of land, water, mineral resources, animals, people and unfortunately - governments.

Do we have a good government? Do the Libyans? Do the Egyptians and Saudi's? It's a mixed bag. Most of us regular folks have little say about how the governments run. Some countries have governments that allow more participation by citizens (like voting) and this is a democratic principle. But just because we vote and look like a Democracy (a representative one) doesn't always mean that our government is being democratic by following the will of the people. This is the disconnect between citizens in many countries and their own governments.

I think about the harm that the British Empire (the government) perpetrated all over the world. Think about the old Ottoman Empire that was split after World War I. Lines were drawn on the map without regard to different groups. Consider Iraq for a moment. There were Kurds, Shiite, and Sunni that were all forced into these neat straight lines and then called Iraq. The British also carved out a piece of oil rich area called Kuwait; that they sought to benefit from. Many wars have been fought in this area (Iran/Iraq War), Desert Shield/Storm, Enduring Freedom, and other operations that I cannot even remember.

Okay, I'll quit picking on the British. I'm sure that the British people do not want continuous war no more than anyone else. Most of them, I suspect, are people simply trying to survive and live for their families. They don't seem to have the same desires as their own government.

If you think about the American Government over the last 50 years, we've done some good and maybe even a little be worse than we should have. We have sponsored more color revolutions than I can shake a stick at. We unseated the Iranian government many years ago to install someone friendlier to us. This resulted in an overthrow of the Shah and a radical filling the vacuum left by him. We've been struggling with that country since. We armed the Iraqis against Iran for 8 years that they slugged it out. Later, the Iraqis would use some of those weapons - and a bunch from the Soviet Union against us in 1990-1991. We manufactured a reason to go into Iraq in 2003 after the World Trade Center and Pentagon strikes against us - come to find out, they had nothing to do with the terrorists doing this. I'm sure they weren't unhappy about it, but celebrating a strike against us is different than striking us.

We armed the Afghanistan's against the Russians for years - only to end up having some of that used against our solders. We took out Kadafi in Libya - only leaving a vacuum to be filled by radicals who hate us. God help the good citizens there, because they aren't all publicly supporting the radicals out of fear of being killed.

Fast-forward to about 2004. We finance a color revolution in Ukraine to oust a leader that was more friendly to Russia and less friendly to us. We were successful in this - for about 6 years, which is when the guy we ousted returned to power. We caused another revolution in Ukraine in 2014 and brought in the currently leadership. Russia took Crimea, which has likely been Russia's for a long time. Then we started talking about Ukraine joining NATO (along with Georgia). Somehow Russia was supposed to ignore this. They would be stupid to ignore this. The Ukrainian people didn't want this. The Russian people didn't want this. Their government's imposed this on them. Our government imposed the financial cost of military hardware and cash sent to Ukraine from our paychecks. Did we ask for this?
Did the Ukrainians want 100s of thousands (even a million) people to die? Did the Russian citizens want 10s of thousands of their sons to die?

Deep down, I know that people want the good. We want to be thought of as good and many of us actually want to do good. This is everyone from everywhere.

But perception about rather we are a "Good Country" or a "Bad Country" is often drawn from what our governments do. I deeply believe that we have gone through periods of that we were actually good and other times that we were actually bad.

We have to get out of everyone else's business. Some countries will be friends and trading partners, others will be only trading partners, and another group will never be our friends. Truth is, that's okay. It's not grounds to finance and prop up resentment within that country to affect a leadership change. We've done way too much of this. We need to be more about America first, be self-sufficient, good to those who are good to us, and indifferent to those who hate America.

Let's just be the Good Guys Again - it starts with actual study of history and voting pro-American.