South Sudan and the “Supposed Good Guys” | The American Conservative

South Sudan and the “Supposed Good Guys” | The American Conservative: The “supposed good guys” happened to be the people in charge of the armed insurgency that the U.S. chose to support. Like many other insurgent groups over the years, their “goodness” was defined by their opposition to the government they were rebelling against. Like other cases of separatism gone awry, the new state that the U.S. helped to bring into being was plagued by so many political ills that its turn to authoritarianism, corruption, and internal conflict was practically guaranteed from the start. Given our recent experiences with ill-advised foreign interventions and the constant pleas to support “good” rebels in one conflict after another, Americans will have no trouble believing that the people that Washington anointed as “good guys” proved to be much less than that. They may begin wondering why our government thinks that it knows what it’s doing when it supports the creation of new states that always seemed almost doomed to fail.