It has been more than six years since President George W. Bush declared a global war on terrorism and since then the world has endured use of the phrase ?rogue state.?

Rogue states, together forming the ?Axis of Evil,? are the supposed biggest threats to world peace. This is ironic, as many would consider the United States a ?rogue superpower.?

If the reader has a red face already, he or she must remember that America is not an especially moral nation. Nor is it always the victim of terrorism; there have been many instances when America has executed actions usually thought to be reserved for the rogue states.

For instance, covert operations have been a part of U.S. foreign policy at least since Woodrow Wilson?s administration, when the then-president tried to poison Poncho Villa and helped invade Bolshevik Russia (throughout the Cold War the Soviets still claimed damages from this multinational attack).

Since then, the American Executive branch of government has, through the CIA, helped stage a coup in 1953 to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and replace him with the Shah, who then created a police state. Mossadegh was likely forced out of power because he had nationalized the country?s oil industry.

The Kennedy administration repeatedly produced unsuccessful and counterproductive attempts on Fidel Castro?s life (once with an exploding cigar), only increasing his popularity among the Cuban people.

In 1973, the Nixon administration killed Salvador Allende of Chile by bombing his presidential palace, allowing Augusto Pinochet to establish a military junta that lasted for seventeen years. The Executive branch has also rigged a Lebanese election. Surely these actions should be considered terrorism.

American ?Exceptionalism? remains a powerfully prevalent idea. From John Winthrop?s designation of the Puritan community as a ?city upon a hill? to twenty-first century radio talk shows, many Americans love to gush about how their country is a blueprint of moral success given to an ungrateful world.

This ?international good guy approach? forgets the offenses the United States has committed against weaker countries while calling those of, say, Libya or North Korea ?state terrorism.?

If one must call the United States the ?last, best hope on earth? or the ?only moral nation in the world? one should not say it to America. One should say it to the descendents of the 500,000 Filipinos killed by American forces at the turn of the century or the families of the estimated 5,000 Afghans who died during aerial bombing in late 2001.

One should say it to the citizens of Iran who lived during Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi?s regime. One should speak those proud words not to those who will be blindly accepting of them, but to those who know better. Then one can hear voices that America ignores at its own peril.