Bad Guys? What are those?

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Bad guys. That brings forth a pretty strong image in the mind of most people, usually of a wicked man clad in a black cape, possibly wearing a top-hat and monocle depending upon the timeframe. But what are bad guys, really? Who are they? Not the silver screen villains, but the real world “bad guys?”

A Social Studies teacher at my high school responded with “I support the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq because it helps us catch and beat the bad guys.” Who are they, may I ask? The terrorists, yes, are “bad guys” no matter how you look at it. This isn’t about the Patriot Act or the terrorists or President Bush’s special way of taking the English language and turning it into an entirely different animal. It’s more about the “bad guys” the United States and its allies are facing in Iraq.

Allow me to pose a question: Why are they “bad guys”? I understand that, yes, they’re shooting our soldiers and yes, they’re against the Coalition Forces occupying their country but I want to know what about either of those things makes them “bad guys”. None of that generalization rubbish, either. Saying “Well, they pray to Allah and are probably terrorists” is a load of hooey. In reality, that’s no better than the Red Scare during the Cold War. In this scenario you simply replace the word “Communist” with “terrorist” and it matches up almost completely.

And before people start to think I’m some whackjob that supports Al Qaeda, allow me to explain this further. Al Qaeda and terrorist organizations aren’t the same as Iraqi insurgents and civilians, for the most part. Let’s think back a few hundred years for just a moment. Way back in the day America wasn’t really America. It was a bunch of colonies that Britain happened to own. This was all peachy-keen and good until the colonists figured out, “Hey, we’re three thousand miles away. Why in the hell are they governing what we do here? Let’s get some freedom!” And they did. America became it’s own country, the citizens were freed from British rule and taxes, etc, etc. And so on. During the war it was plain as day that the British were the “bad guys”, right? Think about it from the standpoint of the British…There were women back in England finding out that their husband–their children’s father–was killed by colonists that wanted to break away from Britain. Perhaps not the strongest example the point remains–this “bad guy” business is solely based on the speculation of whomever is judging aforementioned “bad guy”.

Now, apply this to Iraq. The overall situation is the same but the scenario is different. A power hungry man has troops on foreign soil, dictating what people can and cannot do essentially. The difference is that protesting is considered terrorism, in this case, and results in those involved ending up dead. I think it’s high-time that President Bush gets the troops out of Iraq. For starters, it was a completely unjustified war–oil doesn’t count as a good reason to take a nation and turn its way of “life”, so to speak, completely upside-down. Saddam Hussein was a man who crushed his people with an iron fist, true, but Iraq was kept under control. Removing a leader from power, even a tyrant, is never a good idea to begin with. All of this has already happened though.

Without order there is chaos; that’s common sense, really. I feel that it was unnecessary to go to war to begin with, much less continue the occupation of Iraq until a new leader steps forward. So, in summation, it’s about time that Iraq was left alone and Bush put our troops towards helping the problems our nation is already facing. Hurricane Katrina’s damage, the fuel issues and so on.

And maybe, after reading this, a few folks will have the sense to think before calling people “bad guys”. Who knows, you may be so busy calling someone else a bad guy that you won’t notice how many wrongs you’ve been doing, yourself.