In a lot of ways your correct. Even if one believes our atrocities are justified, "we all have it coming, kid".  In our lifetimes or the next, the cycles of history never stopped turning.

What helps makes someone a "good" American is not turning off their brain and waving the flag incessantly, but thinking, being able to be introspective in looking a our place and actions in the bigger picture.  To carry these ideas in the public discourse. It is these things that will guide us away from the fate you mention.