(Chicago, IL) -- Part of being a citizen of the United States is that we have certain standards that we try to live up to.  We strive to be the best at whatever we do and thanks to this rather large melting pot, we have our hands in many endeavors at once.  Some people argue that as you take on more, you become only average at everything as opposed to excelling at a few things.  One need look no farther than the U.S. automotive industry to see the effects of too many things on your plate.

As a nation, we also feel the need to help others achieve the American ideal.  Unfortunately, many of these people have not asked for our help.  Look at what happened with Iran in the late 70's.  We pushed American ideals such as the right to wear Levi Jeans on a very conservative nation and the resultant rebellion and hostage crisis destroyed Jimmy Carter's presidency.  As Communism was beginning to fall in Eastern Europe, the U. S. quickly pledged money and McDonald's franchises to these former Soviet block nations. If you ask a man in a Moscow food line (holding Rubles that have dropped 20% in value in the three hours he's stood there) who is to blame for his lot in life, he will quickly point to Washington.

It's no wonder that people in other countries hate us!  We need to look no further than the world of sports for proof.  The United States has had the audacity for more than a century to crown WORLD CHAMPIONS in leagues for which other countries have no representation!  We create the World League of American Football in Europe and what do we do?  We give them the wretched refuse of OUR teaming shore as athletes.  Speaking of football... the sport we call soccer is referred to as football everywhere else in the world.

For years though we have had an "understanding" with our foreign neighbors which has allowed them to show up United Nations meetings with their turbans held high.  We let them have the Olympics and soccer.  We would field dramatically undermanned teams and allow some foreign country) who's name has three times as many vowels as consonants) to beat up on us and take home a medal or trophy.  They were allowed to have that little feeling of national pride because they knew that at any given moment we could nuke their butts back to the stone age, and they were grateful.

And then somewhere along the line we decided that it was time to expand into those realms as well.  Having grown tired of fielding mediocre basketball teams in the Olympics, the Dream Team was born.  The U. S. sent the greatest basketball player of all time, Patrick Ewing, and a few other guys who I think played in Chicago to demolish every foreign team in sight.

Now the latest example of the United States not knowing when to quit.  While I appreciate women ripping off their tops and running around as much as the next guy... we had no business interfering with the Women's World Cup. Less than three months after bombing the Chinese embassy in Kosovo we further rub their noses in it by beating their national team on penalty kicks.  Of course, FIFA is actually to blame for part of that.  Why would you ever want penalty kicks in a playoff game?  Even the National Hockey League (a world title for Canadian and U. S. teams only) made the fans endure a gut-wrenching triple overtime game to decide its champion.  Let them play until they drop.

The United States owes the Peoples' Republic of China an apology and a re-match.  This is a necessary first step that we absolutely must take to restore the little goodwill that might still exist between the United States and its neighbors.