The Bully Runs the Schoolyard

America is a big, fat bully.

You might think I’m a traitor for saying that. You might think that I shouldn’t be pointing a judgmental finger at the greatest country on earth, the all-powerful promoter of freedom across the globe, the place where I was born and raised.

My response would be that I do love this country and its people very much. I just hate its foreign policy. After all, I’m only here because my parents fled Guatemala after a CIA-sponsored coup that plummeted their country into the longest and bloodiest civil war in modern Central American history.

Sound familiar?

Yes, America, it’s time we faced the facts. In the eyes of the world we’re the ones who feign sainthood while intimidating the weak and stealing their lunch money. Others hate us for the zero consequences we enjoy. They hate us because we’re just plain meaner than they are.

But that’s ok because we’re the good guys, right? It’s important that we keep the rest of the world in check so that evil interests don’t obtain nuclear weapons. This is how we ensure the safety of all humanity.

Never mind that the United States is the only country that has ever actually used nuclear weapons, dropping them on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, killing over 200,000 people, the majority being civilians.

It’s an open wound in the history of mankind just like old scars from the bully in the schoolyard.

But that hasn’t fazed us so far. We still boast the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world and continue to invade countries decade after decade, from Korea to Vietnam to that pesky Iraq war (take two).

Yet in Iraq we’ve expended every precaution to avoid civilian casualties. We went there not to harm the innocent but to liberate them from under the thumb of an evil dictator. We brought with us sophisticated weaponry as to comply with the restrictions regarding civilians in the Geneva Conventions:

“…the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever … violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture… outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment… the passing of sentences … without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”

I guess our bombs aren’t so smart after all. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi people have been killed since the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom, many more than died under Saddam Hussein’s rule.

And to top it off we’ve changed the rules of the playground to allow for torture, to keep uncharged detainees in secret prisons for indefinite amount of times, and to deny those people their right to a trial.

Can you say “Concentration Camp”?

OK, so we’ve committed a few war crimes here and there and made a joke of Habeas Corpus. We’ve participated in these types of practices before. Why all the resentment towards us now? What’s the big deal?

Aside from the obvious the big deal is we live in the age of information. At the fingertips of billions around the globe are images of naked men on leashes, dead Iraqi children, and the unassuming faces of the young men and woman we continuously place in the heart of danger despite You-Tube’s numerous videos of our Commander And Chief boldface lying about our purpose there. It’s a runaway train we’ll never catch.

In our uncertain future the Internet could be fastest kid that finally outsmarts the bully.

He could make it home and tell his parents. He could get teachers and other elders involved. He could stir the pot and make the bully afraid to go outside, a lone victim of his own cruel choices.

I still wish justice for the bully at my school. I sometimes imagine him living in the worst conditions, wallowing in the fruit of what he’s sewn. I know it sounds harsh but I feel justified in my lingering. He hurt me at a most vulnerable time and, after all, I’m only human.

And apparently, America, so is the rest of the world.