Americans and Foreign Policy

This P J O'Rourke article is great. Read the whole thing. One excerpt:

As of early 2004, America didn't seem to have the answers for postwar Iraq. Then again, what were the questions? Was there a bad man? And his bad kids? Were they running a bad country? That did bad things? Did they have a lot of oil money to do bad things with? Were they going to do more bad things? If those were the questions, was the answer "UN-supervised national reconciliation" or "rapid return to self-rule"? No. The answer was blow the place to bits. A mess was left behind. But it's a mess without a military to fight aggressive wars; a mess without the facilities to develop dangerous weapons; a mess that cannot systematically kill, torture, and oppress millions of its citizens. It's a mess with a message - don't mess with us.

(vis Crosblog)