More to the point..Decker u have pointed out time and again about American mistakes and missteps throughout our history. In doing so u have brought to light our history since after WW2. We really aren' t the good guys..we're Americans, basically ensuring whats good for America. We're generally moral and ethical...but we ALWAYS do whats in our best interest. And by we...Dems and Repubs alike. Living in a vacuum, maybe its not always the best choice, maybe not ethical, nor follows our own laws...but we seem to try and do what we want to ensure our brand of right and wrong and more importantly our survival. We did horrible things to our own indigenous people...we did some pretty crazy stuff in the Philippines, we invaded Mexico to get land (not sure that's working out 
) we have gone into battle and not taken prisoners...mostly any Island invasion during the Pacific campaign. We knocked over plenty of governments in Central and South America....we've delt with plenty of crappy people. When did we become the good guy...hell we nuked people. Still we're better then most...marginally....but better.
You’re very right, in recent history, the CIAs list of crimes is very big and very heinous. We have done bad things. The country has a track record a mile long of crimes against humanity…Indians, slavery, the Irish….(mel brooks). That’s what we are. But we still fight the good fight as reflected in the ideals in our Constitution.
Otherwise we could just scrap the constitution and play it by ear where the only metric we use for moral behavior is pure license to achieve whatever the US wants to achieve for whatever purpose it sees fit. Murder, rape and torture are just tools of the trade. That was the policy of the Japanese, Nazis, Soviets, South American death squads and so on. It’s one thing for that stuff to happen as incidental and it’s another thing to have it happen as a matter of State policy. We are not winning the hearts and minds, that’s for sure.
We are the world power. We lead with power and our example is learned. Why do the Arabs hate the US? Like you’ve said, we’ve toppled their governments and made their lives hell. We’ve done that all over the world. Now we are experiencing the blowback with these potshot terrorist attacks.
Just b/c the US has done terrible things in the past does not mean it has to keep doing those awful things and it really doesn’t mean that we have to embrace the dark side just b/c it existed in the past.
