Arrogant Americans

What gives Americans the right to feel so superior to people in other parts of the world?  Why are we better than anyone else?  Because we had the good sense to be born in the USA?  Not a reason.

I am reading a book called Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner.  It was recommended by a friend, and is pretty scary. It exposes how inept the CIA has been since the day it was founded, and highlights how ignorant we have been of conditions and traditions in other countries.  A few men have been allowed to virtually ignore all the rules of civilization because only they knew what was best for this country, and by extrapolation, the world.  In reality, they have done so much harm, ranging from sending agents to certain death, to assassinations of heads of state, to overthrowing governments and installing puppet regimes, no matter how brutal the consequences.  All of this has been done without the knowledge of the people who are elected to run this country.  Elected officials, right on up to and including Presidents, have been kept in the dark about what the CIA actually does.

Granted, the USA is probably not the only country doing all these horrible things, but I had always believed that we, as a country, held to the highest moral standards; that we were truly the country that the rest of the world should look up to, to provide the ultimate example of morality.  This book makes me realize just how naive I am.  The people who are making these high level decisions, or at least those who have in the past, are so arrogant and ignorant, heartless and immoral, that it makes me afraid.  I am only halfway through this book, up to the point of JFK's assassination, and maybe what follows will not be as horrifying as what went on from the end of WWII into the early 1960s; but I really don't expect it to get much better.

One of the main conclusions I am taking away from this book is that we, as Americans, think we are so superior to others that we have the right to actually tell everyone how to live and to use other countries to further our so-called best interests; and that the other countries must agree with us.  What gives us this right?  Isn't it time we start to recognize that we are no more important than anyone else?  And how much longer will the rest of the world put up with our arrogance?