Introduction

From “We Are The Bad Guys: The Global Cost of American Power”

I‘m an American. I was raised in the Midwest in Minnesota. I graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a degree in history, and then became an officer and pilot in the United States Marine Corps. I was proud to “defend my country,” “show the flag,” and “support democracy.”

In 1989 I was part of a naval deployment during the Philippine coup attempt and deployed again to the Middle East for Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I was helping to protect the greatest country in the world from those who challenged it or wanted to challenge our freedoms or our way of life.

Slogans and quotes from earlier patriots rang in my head. “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” “Give me liberty or give me death.” “Freedom isn’t free.” “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

But I slowly started feeling that something was off.

I started to notice that what we were doing, and how we were doing it, didn’t really match what we said we were doing, or why we said we were doing it.

I started to notice that the looks on the faces of the local population weren’t those of gratitude, or of liberation, or even of freedom or happiness. They were looks of resignation and distrust.

Because of that, I started talking to locals more and listening to their stories, and what I slowly recognized through those conversations was that the reasons I was told we were in these other countries, what we were doing, and why we were doing it, wasn’t correct, or at the very least wasn’t complete. I recognized a fundamental disconnect between the official reasons for our presence and reality.

This clash between what I was told and what I saw created cognitive dissonance. My brain couldn’t hold these contradictory truths at the same time. The only way to remove this dissonance was by digging into the information more deeply until one piece of information maintained its truth, and the other started to crumble.

Consequently, I spent the last 20 years using my training as a historian to study the history and the background of many of the events that have shaped the world and the United States. I didn’t concentrate on the event itself or the popular narrative. Instead, I investigated why key players acted as they did and the circumstances surrounding these events. In other words, I tried to look at events through the eyes not only of an American, but also through the eyes of the people local to the event.

This is a monumental revelation that challenges everything most Americans believe about our country’s role in the world, and quite frankly, it’s one that many Americans will not be able to accept. Many are unable to accept anything that conflicts with their lifelong beliefs and they just dismiss it with a wave of the hand and a comment of “that’s not true,” or even more directly “I don’t believe that.”

I have taken this journey over many years and many hours of research both academically and in person in other countries. I am sharing what I have found with you in the hopes that you might examine the facts and also come to the realization that much of what we have been told, and much of what we believe as Americans, just isn’t true.

The first step in solving a problem is recognizing that there is one.

Once we recognize a problem, we can work on solving it. In this case, that means making this country what it has the potential to be. This book aims to expose an issue that is hidden by design. An issue that is keeping the United States from being in reality, what it claims to be in speech, and through that exposure, take a first step in embarking on a path of repair.

My goal is to expose and break some of the molds that keep us as a nation from becoming the shining example of democracy, freedom, and justice that so many of us believe we already are. Americans are good people, but America as a country is engaged in worldwide activity that does not display the compassion or the empathy that we claim to have. It engages in activities that the rest of the world considers despotic, uncaring, and imperial.

This statement is not my opinion. International media consistently portrays America as a harbinger of coercion and destruction.

“How can we view ourselves one way while much of the rest of the world views us completely differently?”

If presented with the same information, most large groups will come to the same, or very similar, conclusions. If they don’t, it means that they don’t have the same information, or individuals or small groups hold more decision-making power than the large group does. In the case of the United States and its international actions, my research suggests that it is a little of both—and that is much of what this book explores.

This book will examine why “the truth” as we know it, is not the whole truth and because of that, why many people’s opinions and beliefs are not formed from a position of knowledge or experience. In fact, we’ll examine how many people’s opinions and beliefs are crafted for them.

This book challenges you to examine what you think you know from a different perspective by providing information and perspective that might not align with what you’ve been taught. Let me show you how this pattern of incomplete information works with a simple example most Americans learned in school.

In elementary school in the United States, most children are taught that “Columbus discovered America.”

Then in high school they learn that Columbus wasn’t the first one to discover America; the Vikings had discovered it centuries earlier.

Then in college, if they study history, they learn that Columbus didn’t even see or set foot on what is today known as the American mainland. The closest he came was during his fourth voyage (did you know he made four voyages to the Americas?) when he was exploring the northern parts of Central America.

They may have learned that Columbus, an Italian, was sponsored by Spain because Spain wanted to find a faster route to Asia, but they probably didn’t learn that Spain didn’t care about discovery. They wanted to increase trade, spread Christianity, and gain territorial advantage over other countries.

In fact, when Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492, he thought he was all the way in India, and so he called the people there “Indians.” That is why we still use that term today.

But did you learn that in 1500, eight years after “discovering” America, Columbus was arrested for tyranny, brutality, and corruption and extradited back to Spain in chains?

Did you learn that he was later released and died just six years later in 1506, stripped of prestige, feeling betrayed and neglected, largely out of both public and royal favor, without title, without the vast riches he believed he had earned, largely forgotten, widely discredited, and a social outcast?

When you know all the facts, it changes your perspective from the energetic, happy, explorer-hero setting out to find new lands, to an almost hypocritical missionary brute who stayed one-step ahead of the law until his actions caught up with him. Which was he? Maybe a little of both. History is seldom clear cut.

But it helps to know the whole truth so you can discuss an event or person logically from a position of knowledge and make informed decisions.

This pattern of progressive revelation—learning more complete truths as we dig deeper—applies to much larger issues than Columbus, and we’re going to use that approach to examine the United States we think we know.

The narrative most of us have been taught is one of American dominance, benevolence, kindness, and international support. But that narrative doesn’t fit what most other people are taught in other countries.

When I travel and discuss history or current events with citizens of other countries, they frequently look at me with a confused expression and ask:

“How can you not know this?”

That’s an excellent question. How can we not know?

The answer is that we live in various information bubbles. The information that we receive in those bubbles influences what we think we know and subsequently how we think. In fact, some of the statements made in this book might be perceived by a reader to be incorrect or exaggerated because they don’t fit the narrative that they’ve been taught.

To address this, I’ve meticulously referenced every fact, statistic, and claim in the endnotes using both primary and secondary sources. I encourage everyone to check the references and investigate anything they disagree with.

This book will give you new perspectives to U.S. involvement in international events and in domestic actions. It will give you a contrasting perspective of the stories or history that you think you already know. By doing that, hopefully it will motivate you to find out more, become more informed, and better equipped to make decisions and formulate opinions on current events and U.S. actions.

Now let’s start talking about The United States that we think we live in…