I am \u201cold\u201d; approaching the Biblical definition of \u201cold\u201d; three score and ten. I grew up in the 1960\u2019s. But even as old as I am, I was a little bit past the age of the \u201ccowboy movies\u201d. That was more in the fifties, though I definitely saw my fair share of John Wayne epics. But I was a little bit past the heyday of Audie Murphy, Tom Mix, Gary Cooper and Randolph Scott. I saw their black and white movies, usually on TV on Saturday afternoon. But they were definitely before \u201cmy time\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides Wayne, my cowboys were Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, with a sprinkling of Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, and Henry Fonda (my favorite actor). They were kind of anti-heroes. Newman and Redford, in the wonderful \u201cButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid\u201d; portrayed criminals, doomed to destruction. And Clint Eastwood, either in the Spaghetti Westerns like \u201cThe Good, the Bad, and the Ugly\u201d, or the later \u201cOutlaw Josey Wales\u201d was definitely not the typical good guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I still got it: they were \u201cgood guys\u201d, even if they weren\u2019t perfect. And then there were the real \u201cbad guys\u201d. In the fifties movies you could usually tell by their hats: good guys wore white, bad guys wore black. John Wayne almost always wore white, except when he played the sheriff in \u201cTrue Grit\u201d. And when Wayne played Davy Crockett in the Alamo (coonskin cap, of course), we were again reminded the difference between the \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d guys. Mexican General Santa Anna ordered his buglers to play \u201cEl Deguello\u201d, the throat cutting. There were to be no prisoners, and no mercy, for the Texican rebels. The Mexican Army even wore black hats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
America used to think of itself as a \u201cwhite hat\u201d country. We were the good guys, John Wayne in \u201cThe Cowboys\u201d or \u201cBig Jake”, my favorites. (Okay, both of those movies were in the early seventies, but close enough). There was no ambiguity. We knew who was good and who was not. Wayne even took that Western role into Vietnam in the 1967 movie \u201cThe Green Berets\u201d, where David Jansen (of the original \u201cThe Fugitive\u201d TV series) played the jaded reporter. John Wayne was \u201cpure\u201d good guy, even in a war where there wasn\u2019t much pure or good to go around. It was Jansen who had to be won over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sure there\u2019s been a change in some American\u2019s view. The \u201cNeo-Cons\u201d of Dick Cheney ilk believed that whatever was good for the US, was good, even if we had to act like the \u201cbad guys\u201d. Americans committed war crimes at Abu Gharib in Iraq, justified in their minds by the horrific attacks on 9-11. There was \u201cgood guy\u201d America: waterboarding captives, and making them stand naked in front of women, threatening their genitals with guard dogs and electric probes. John Wayne would never has stood for that, even in the Green Berets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And today, the Trump Administration seems to take great pride in being \u201cthe bad guys\u201d. The United States of America has no problem bringing the full weight of the government down on a nineteen year-old woman in college going home for Thanksgiving, or a grandmother, or the tenants of a Chicago apartment building. There\u2019s no \u201cgood guy\u201d in that, only \u201cbad guys\u201d reveling in the idea that their atrocities are \u201cin the name\u201d of the USA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And now, Defense Secretary Hegseth has (metaphorically) ordered \u201cEl Deguello\u201d for every one on board a targeted \u201cdrug boat\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Unlike Santa Anna, we aren\u2019t at war with any of the countries involved, nor are the boat crews even \u201crebels\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0No; instead US Special Forces launched a second missile into the wreckage of a ship, to make sure that two survivors of the first attack, wouldn\u2019t make it.\u00a0\u00a0They even have a cute name for it, a \u201cdouble tap\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s the term used by assassins to make sure their target is completely dead: two shots to the head.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0So we are not only attacking ships on the high seas, an illegal act of piracy, but we are assassins as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seal Team Six is the highly touted group of Special Forces, heroic beyond heroism. They brought us the death of Osama bin Laden, in the dramatic raid that finally achieved America\u2019s ultimate retribution for 9-11. But recently, it was revealed that they assassinated North Korean fishermen who interrupted a surveillance operation. The fishermen saw something they shouldn\u2019t have, and innocents lost in the name of gaining North Korean information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But now, the Team is ordered to remotely destroy boats in the high seas, and kill the survivors. I guess it\u2019s good Seals don\u2019t have a uniform cap. It would be hard to determine what color they should wear. And, before anyone starts to say \u201cthey\u2019re just following orders\u201d; the \u201cgood guys\u201d are better than that. It was the United States that demanded the Nuremburg Trials after World War II, rather than just summarily executing the leaders of the Nazi regime. We wanted a clear delineation; that \u201cfollowing orders\u201d wasn\u2019t an excuse for \u201cwar crimes\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ronald Reagan (not my favorite President), in his farewell address, spoke as America as \u201c\u2026a shining city on a hill\u201d; an example for the world of freedom, and justice. As I would put it, \u201cthe good guys\u201d. But, as we round up grandmothers and children, kill survivors of our military actions, threaten Venezuela and Columbia; we no longer deserve a \u201cwhite hat\u201d. Our \u201cshining city\u201d is now badly tarnished gold, just like our very real White House. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our reputation is gone. I don\u2019t know how we get it back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"