...because we're the good guys.

I'm old enough to remember World War II. That seems rather remarkable. To me, at least. Because that seems so long, long ago. Oh, I was only a kid. Not even 10 yet when the war ended. But I was certainly aware that we were at war. And I heard stories about what war was like. Soldiers killed each other. That this was the natural course of human events. As youngsters, we even played war games. Shooting each other with our play pistols and rifles. We'd go to the movies, too, and see news reels of the fighting. Planes being shot down. And at the end of the war, we'd see the death and devastation at the concentration camps. Rather horrid. The world was divided into the good guys and the bad guys. And we Americans were the good guys. Through and through. I wasn't yet aware that we white Americans also were racists. That dark-skinned people were subjugated. Treated in many ways like the Jews were treated in Nazi Germany. Denied basic civil and human rights. Yes, I wasn't yet educated. Not yet informed. I still had a lot to learn. Still do, for that matter. Now I'm told that it's all right for America to start wars. Preemptive wars, they're called. And that it's all right for America to torture prisoners and lock them up in dungeons and just throw away the keys. Without giving 'em legal counsel. We said it was a war crime when the Japanese and the Germans did it during World War II. But we have a president who now says it's all right for us to perpetrate such acts...because we're the good guys. --Jim Broede