John Hawkins has a great piece explaining why we don’t want to be the next Roman Empire. Here’s a snippet:
If you want put it in perspective, it’s like we’re the guy who ended up being the designated driver for the planet. Sure we’d love to sit back and drink ourselves into a stupor with the rest of the globe but we’re responsible for getting as many people home safe and sound as possible. Every so often while we’re sitting around wishing we could kill a few beers like the rest of the planet, a sloppy drunk, drooling, Europe comes over to where we’re sitting. Then they take another swig of Vodka straight out of the bottle and tell us not to worry about a thing because they’ll drive everyone home in their ‘international law’ van. But we know if we go ahead and drink up that we’ll just get a call at 4 am asking us to bring our tow truck and the ‘jaws of life’ to clean up the bloody mess on dead man’s curve. That’s the burden of being an American.
Exactly. Remember, conservatives were the ones who were telling the world that we were overextended militarily and that we could no longer afford to be the policeman for the world. Europe complained. Now, when we’re facing a threat that really must be dealt with for the good of all, and we have no other choice but be the world’s policeman, Europe still complains. Which is why the US should simply tell Europe to get stuffed and don’t bother calling the next time they want someone to clean up the Balkans for them.
