Millions dead since 1945 ... yet Americans are convinced they are the emissaries of peace and good will.

The flag won't protect you; it's in the wrong hands: "By Luciana Bohne | 08/13/05 'ICH' -- --

Across my lawn, I can see an American flag waving in my neighbor's backyard. Mr. Smith (not his name, of course) is a nice man but he's 95 years old, and I can't take issue with him. I can't tell him that the sporting of the flag, at this time, is tantamount to saying, 'I am a fool. Traitors run the country in our name. They are taking our money from the treasury and spending it on a shortcut to world domination through war.
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Since 1945, a conservative death count for US adventures abroad can easily tally up to 6 million. Easily! Circa 3 million in Vietnam alone; then there's Indonesia, Haiti, Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, just off the top of my head. Plenty of torture, too: Argentina, Brazil, Egypt. Oh, you know the sad litany.
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And yet, these Americans are convinced they are the emissaries of peace and good will. Pretty staggering delusion all things considered—pathological, one might say. What is the cause of this megalomania? Perhaps it's that radical branch of Protestantism called Puritanism? A kind of Anglo equivalent of Wahabbism? I mean, that weird theology that grants Americans the status of Elect, All-Good, Ever-Just. Certainly the New England writers of the 19th century thought so.
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"What have you got against Puritans?" says I to my newly-wed, American professor-of-literature husband some 30 years ago. "Hypocrites," says he, laconically. And cryptically, I thought until now. But he's gone. And I can't share his wisdom with a conspiratorial smile. This God of theirs is indeed a God of Hypocrisy, for He bestows on their remarkable aggression and love of war a unique affection. You could call Him Mars—but then we know we make our gods in our own image. ...