GORDON DUFF: POGO: WE HAVE MET THE EVILDOERS AND SOME IS US

WAKE UP TO A REAL WORLD OF “PEOPLE”

NOT CARTOON VILLAINS

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER

For 8 years, we have been going broke building a wall around America to protect us from imaginary “evildoers” around the world.  You can still walk across from Mexico or Canada or send a shipload of anything into the country with nobody noticing and it seems like the only “evildoers” we are going after are each other.

With the phony “War on Terror” and our “special rendition” programs, secret prisons and trillion dollar army, we have flushed our common sense down the toilet with yesterday’s meatloaf.  The world of angry terrorists we are fighting exists only in the minds of a few nut cases, many in our government and military, and the people who make a living writing the scary stories in the press.

A WORLD OF “JOE 6-PACKS”

I travel alot, sometimes to odd places.  The rest of the time I am on the phone with friends, a combination of military retirees, oil and gas bankers in 30 countries, retired FBI guys and the folks I share hobbies with, motorcycles, wine, things like that.

At times we end up in conference calls for hours from Jordan, Greece, Iraq and here at home with people who would normally never meet each other.  I use computer to save money and a speaker.  My point, of course, is that none of us are different, and, over the years, some friendships most Americans would consider “odd” have developed.  Taken on the whole, anything said could be at any corner bar in America filled with “joe 6-packs”.

When you get to know people around the world, we learn many people misunderstand America but the world is nothing like the newspapers or TV tell us.

MAYBE THE TALIBAN IS RIGHT ABOUT TV

Turn on any TV in Europe and you will see America filled with shootings, cereal (serial)  killers and psychic detectives.  Europeans used to use these shows either to condemn gun ownership or to criticize America.  Now they make the same shows themselves.  Try watching “Wallander.”  It seems everyone in Sweden and maybe Denmark too, is a cereal (serial) killer or rooftop sniper.

TV isn’t all that innocent.  Yes, we love seeing crimes solved and all the “characters” on USA Network but TV has created a worldview that is meant to confuse, misinform and frighten, not only Americans but people around the world who watch American TV.  Face it, 90% of the TV shows in the world are American.

TV’S WAR ON VETERANS

Veterans have been the butt of this abuse for years.  Vietnam vets were all baby killers, drug addicts or mass murderers.  I could name, not a hundred, but a thousand movies and TV shows showing that.  They are now starting on Iraq veterans with the same thing.  It has to stop.

AMERICA AS THE “LIGHT OF THE WORLD”

With Airlines such as they are, airport security such as it is and money gone, average people are not going to flock to Dubai, Mumbai or Paris.  The world is not a perfect place, there is danger and a small criminal element would turn the world into a prison camp if it could, that part is true.

Americans of every different age group grew up in a different country.  America changes.  My father grew up in Detroit after the turn of the last century and my mother in a coal mining camp in Kentucky in the 20s and 30s.  The worlds they grew up in are gone, maybe not “gone enough” but were a combination, as they described them, of cruel indifference and people filled with kindness and generosity.

America was controlled by a “few” with endless power.  Many freedoms and privileges we take for granted now didn’t exist then.  That generation fought evil in America to make sure children didn’t starve and people could work for a decent wage and retire for dignity.  The same generation fought a war that may, I hope, be the defining moment in world history.

At the same time, millions starved each year in China.  We are taught to fear them as an enemy but I am only glad that they have food, jobs and a decent life.  For “commies” they seem to be the most Capitalist nation on Earth.

What always made Americans the best people in the world is the fact that we were the ones who cared if the Chinese starved or people in Africa lived in dire poverty.  This is what has always defined America and most people in the world, fewer than 8 years ago, but still most, see us in that light.

AMERICA IS ABOUT FREEDOM

After World War II, 90% of the wealth in the world was here.  Nobody else could make a difference.  They had food rationing in Britain well into the 1950s, Russia had been totally destroyed, Germany, Japan and much of the world.  The ruins of that war are still around, not so many anymore, but you can see them.

For centuries colonial powers ruled the world.  We were a colony and fought to be independent.  Other countries that sought freedom themselves looked to us as an example.  Over the years, however, we have been less and less an example and have looked more and more like the people we had fought.

Our enemies, and we have had them, the communist bloc, at times Libya, Syria, Iran and others have pushed the same ideas.  Our stupidity and greed has made it easy for them.

DID AMERICA BECOME “LESS AMERICAN?”

But as America has changed, the world changes.  Maybe it is American TV but more likely the internet, and shared dreams of home ownership, educated children and a shared investment in a future, a future that can only exist with peace.

We accept the idea of people hating us, our ideals, our economic system or even our race.  America isn’t white anymore, look around you.  Our economic system no longer exists, having gone the same direction as communism, now being replaced with European socialism, either that or total collapse.

AMERICA SENDS ITS PHONY “CHRISTIAN CRUSADERS” PACKING

The real founding fathers weren’t Christian, certainly not the imaginary Ronald Reagan/Jerry Fallwell type.  The Europe we freed ourselves from was Christian and totally screwed up because of it.  We built a government with NO religion and strong prohibitions preventing any attempt to establish one.

Thus, “real America” has no war with Islam.  You can build a mosque anywhere you can buy the land and preach anything you want with some notable and supportable exceptions.  You can build a mosque and thousands have.

THE MYTH OF AMERICAN FOREIGN AID

Blowhards talk about the billions we spend in foreign aid.  Much of that money, of course, is to pay for weapons that American companies make huge profits selling, weapons that sometimes defend our friends and sometimes put us in hot water.  Blowhards love stories but don’t do so well with the truth.

Does America receive foreign aid?  When China, Russia or countries in the Middle East buy T-Bills, spending hundreds of billions or more, they are lending us money.  Is this foreign aid?  My answer is, yes.  Is it done out of kindness?  Mostly not.  Protecting America as the only stabilizing influence in the world has been the key to keeping the planet glued together for a long time.

Even 8 years of “boogeyman” foreign policy and corruption has not destroyed that ideal.

WHY THE WORLD NEEDS OBAMA TO SUCCEED BUT MANY AMERICANS PRAY FOR HIM TO FAIL

Americans are split on Obama.  Most support him, now, at least, and few Americans have any understanding of our economic disaster, although we hear little else.

To those outside America, Obama is everything.  He is everything because, before Bush “the lesser” America was everything.  Invading Iraq was one thing.  Saddam was a brutal idiot and removing him wasn’t evil.  Doing it as we did, pushing Iraq into years of suffering out of our own stupidity, however, made America look brutal and foolish itself.

Adding to this the secret prisons, the torture and the years of idiotic rhetoric presenting America to the world as a nation at war with Islam on religious grounds, and people everywhere cringed.  We had taken something away from them.

FREEDOM WITHOUT DISSENT IS PURE BALONEY

The Statue of Liberty is a symbol.  It was built in France, a gift to the United States.  Americans love it but it represents more to people outside American than within.

Seeing millions of Americans protest Vietnam made us free in the eyes of the world.  Every time an American stand us against the powerful, even in an unpopular cause, everyone in the world sees it.

These are the things that define courage and freedom, not the aircraft carriers and “missile shields.”  America was political upheaval, dissent, discussion, change.  America was never perfect but it was always something to be looked on by others as the keystone of world progress.

DON’T LOOK FOR COURAGE IN WASHINGTON DC WITHOUT A MAGNIFYING GLASS

Then something happened.  We became afraid of being American.  Tactics used by dictatorships around the world were systematically applied at home.  Our government turned “yellow” and our leaders became increasingly maniacal and corrupt, more Saddam and less Lincoln.

America took a punch, maybe hit the canvas a time or two, but was never knocked out.  We are too good for that.  We will still make mistakes and are probably, as many will agree, making a handful now.

What we are doing is trying to be America again, maybe not all of us, some learn slowly, but people are forgetting the “liberal” and “conservative” rhetoric of the totalitarians and they slackjawed lackeys who tried to push us down.

We can now “support the troops” with a government backed by honor, not torture and deceit.  Decent medical care may go alot further than having your picture taken with Cheney and Rumsfeld.

AMERICA, THE WORLD’S “WORK IN PROGRESS”

The rest of the world only wants either leadership from America or to be left alone.  Whatever they want, they think of us.  For the last few years, the admiration was mixed with anger and fear.  Some should fear us.  Believing we couldn’t be “evildoers” ourselves is childish and ignorant, a description appropriate for too many Americans quick to become the things we, as a country, were created to purify the world of.

Was our purpose, those hundreds of years ago that lofty?  Read the documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution.  It is all there and was there even when we chose to deny them.

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.