Let's be real, the CoD community attracts a bunch of manchildren who think they're badass and feel badass when their western country beats down the all evil mother Russia by any means necessary. I haven't played Spec Ops The Line but from what I hear that sounds like a more realistic take on how fucked up America is and they did a better job throwing it in your face so you understand you're aren't a good guy either.
"You still think you're the hero?"
It's a tedious game to play through, but after a point I started getting the feeling that was the idea. It's not supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be sad, tedious, pathetic, and cruel. Nobody is a hero, and you're definitely the villain to many: another gung-ho symptom of American interventionism and white supremacy, stacking bodies high while the locals do better to survive
without you trying to help.
That isn't always the case.
COD4 - British saved the world, Russians(loyalists) save the protagonist and defeat the remaining enemy when the Americans fail to arrive in time
World at War - Russian campaign had the focus
MW2 - British kill the villain American general
Black Ops 1 - okay, yes.
MW3 - Brit & a Russian defeat the franchise villain
BO2 - mostly yes, but we see Woods killing an innocent girl started all this shit,
If you play the game right the Chinese coalition saves the American fleet and fight the final battle with you against the villain
Ghosts - Rogue American is the villain, no saving the world just protecting an already destroyed America
Advanced Warfare - American PMC is the villain, protagonists are an American, Brit and a Russian woman.
BO3 - CIA are clearly villains
Infinite Warfare - UN vs Mars, main protagonists are an American, Lebanese, Robot and a Brit
WW2 - Yup
BO4 - no real story but Woods mental upload is villainous and the BO2's protagonist daughter is a supervillain.
MW19 - British, a Middle Eastern woman, a rogue American and a Russian are the heroes. American leaders don't look great
BOCW - America is entirely responsible for the threat to the world, the leaders only really care about being held responsible and losing dominance.
Counterpoints:
WaW: The depiction of the Japanese is incredibly racist, and the US military charging through them with a plethora of cruel instruments (like flamethrowers) is glorified, while Imperial Japanese guerilla tactics are monstrified. Japan was by no means heroic, but the patriotic overtones completely drown out any moral ambiguity that should exist, replacing it instead with a purely black and white conflict.
MW2: Shepherd's villainy and the introduction of Shadow Company (his own PMC) were done to ensure that no, this US Army General is not actually affiliated with the US Army anymore. It was lazy writing done purely for the sake of deflecting any potential criticism of US imperialism in foreign lands, making the impact MW1's American campaign retroactively as shocking as a wet noodle.
MW3: Makarov is put into the same position as Shepherd in MW2, but unlike MW2, the entire Russian military goes along with it as soon as President Vorchevsky is deposed. And upon his rescue, somehow the entire military returns to being loyal to him? Sloppy.
BO2: Unironically my favorite Call of Duty campaign because of its seeming inability to realize it's self-parody. I have nothing to refute, because the CIA is shown to be ridiculously evil, and you can take the steps to ensure America falls into anarchy and Menendez wins completely.
Ghosts: Rorke makes use of "Venezuelan interrogation techniques", and South America is implausibly made into the new world superpower so that various countries there (primarily Fox News' favorite punching bag, the aforementioned Venezuela) can be heavily demonized to justify the US having their imperialistic table flipped on them. It is, much like World at War was, racist. The only difference is a half-hearted attempt to deflect this racism by making sure the bad guy responsible for
all of this (which, by the way, is a trope Infinity Ward didn't stop using until their next game) is white. "One man changes the whole world" is such a rote device, that they even lampshade it in MW3 without realizing it's self-mockery.
AW: The United States government is wholly responsible for allowing Irons and Atlas to become so powerful.
They even give him a seat on the US Senate.
IW: Every main character sans Omar speaks with an American accent. The UNSA is shown to be multicultural, but every "good guy" who has a significant role to play in the story is American. The SDF is, naturally, led by an Evil Brit(TM).
MW19: The game rewriting history concerning the Highway of Death is well-documented at this point. Otherwise, it was a bold move to make the sole American protagonist defect to the insurgency, as well as depicting them in a positive light. The game certainly has other problems, but it narrowly avoids American exceptionalism. Just
narrowly.