... as long as they were certain that it wouldn't end up in their death or the destruction of their country.
That's the important part of the equation, and the biggest reason why people fear or envy the US - because we can, basically, do just about ANYTHING we want and be relatively certain it won't result in a) the death of the people ordering it or b) destruction of our country. We're powerful enough we CAN do about anything we want. The fact that, for the most part, we don't TRY to take over the world speaks larger volumes (to me at least) than the ocassional Iraq.
Two things:
1. The fact that you can't even "take over" a pissant third world country in the middle east doesn't exactly prop up the bets on the chances that you could take over the entire world. You have enough nukes to DESTROY the entire world if you wanted to, sure, but I really don't see the US being able to "take over" it the way, say, the British Empire did.
2. You are right, however, in saying that there's nothing that you fear, or really need to fear. No outside opponent, no army, no terrorist, can destroy the United States. You can only destroy yourselves by suicide. Lafayette said that about you, and its a lesson I wish you'd listen to now, because you have clearly forgotten it, and Franklin's more famous statements about liberty and security (especially the second part, that he who chooses security over liberty
will soon lose both).
Only you can destroy yourselves, by letting your pettiness and your intellectual poverty and your fear and your baser emotions lead you to cheerfully surrender everything the Founding Fathers fought to create.
That's also why you don't see anyone doing anything about places like Darfur or Zimbabwe - if there were any of Pundit's altruistic nations out there, they'd be trying their damndest to put an end to those genocides.
Line forms to the left. . .
I think you'll note that I already stated that those "altruistic nations" do not exist.
But you will notice that the US has done fuck all about Darfur or Zimbabwe either. So much for the lie that you give a fuck about the "Freedom" of Iraqis, you don't even give a fuck about the
lives of the Sudanese, at least not enough to send troops in to save them, so you certainly didn't send troops into Iraq because you give a flying fuck about the poor little Iraqi's freedoms. And that's why people hate you: you lie, boldfacedly, about your motives. You claim that you want to spread democracy to the world, but you actually just want to control it.
RPGPundit