You’d think after sixty-four years on the beat, after being wounded countless times and seeing innumerable friends die, an old cop would be allowed to retire with dignity, generous benefits, and warm wishes.
You’d think so, but when was the last time you heard one of the United States’ allies tell us, “Old friend, you’ve carried the burden of being the world’s policeman long enough. Under your protection, we’ve grown strong and rich. It’s time for us to look after own defense and keep a sharp eye on our corner of the world. Now’s the time to take care of your own.”
The answer to that question would be: never. In 1945, in the aftermath of World War Two, there really was only one superpower: us. The rest of the industrialized world was in rubble. People were starving; economies were shattered. The hangover from the years of slaughter and devastation would be long and painful.
In that context, it was enlightened self-interest to help old friends and former enemies get back on their feet and rebuild their societies. It was a Herculean task, but we accomplished it. Then we went on to make sure the Soviet Union didn’t overrun all of Europe and much of the rest of the world.
And what did we get for our troubles? Another century older and deeper in debt.
Even the Republicans, who under Ronald Reagan and the two Georges Bush ran up two-thirds of our national debt, have begun complaining — with a Democrat in the White House — about the government spending far more money than it receives as revenue. But neither the GOP nor the Democrats has given a moment’s thought to letting the world’s cop answer his final roll call.
Part of the reason for this might be called the Brett Favre Syndrome. Having known glory for a long, long time, it’s wrenchingly hard to let go. Stay in the game and you can tell yourself that time will never pass you by; you’ll just keep burnishing your record.
And the United States has stats no one will ever approach. In 2008, the U.S. spent $711 billion on defense. That’s more than China, Russia, the European Union, Japan, and South Korea combined. We have 737 military bases around the world; 38 of them are medium to large bases. The latter number is more than either the British or Roman empires had at the pinnacles of their power.
As of 2005 we had 116,000 troops in Europe, 40,258 in South Korea, 40,045 in Japan, and in 2009 there are still 117,000 troops in Iraq and 68,000 in Afghanistan, with possibly a lot more on the way to Afghanistan.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Ruvy
Well, Joe, you Americans can start saving money and putting "officer unfriendly" to bed by getting your money, your soldiers and your bases out of Israel, getting your loudmouthed Harvard elitist of a president to shut the hell up about our internal affairs, get out the "peace" (bullshit) business here, and finally, on the way out, do yourselves a couple of favors.
Nuke Riyahdh so that the Wahhabi trash are dead, and the other Arabs know that terror doesn't pay. Nuke Teheran so that the Persians know not to mess with anybody.
2 - zingzing
kill em all! right, ruvy? blood! funny old man.
3 - Joseph Flynn
Ruvy, thanks for taking the time to read my post and to write a comment. Part of the problem with the U.S being the world's cop is that our "internal affairs" become commingled with those of other countries. A messy business.
On top of our military alliance with Israel, we also send more foreign aid to Israelâ€"roughly $5 billion per year, all of it money we have to borrowâ€"than to any other country. If Israel would like to give that up, the taxpayers of the U.S. would say thank you very much. But asking us to start a nuclear war as a "favor" is something we just can't do. It might help, though, if Israel were to acknowledge its own nuclear arsenal because, as I said in my post, the idea is deterrence.
Shalom, Ruvy, to you and all your neighbors, Israelis and Arabs.
4 - Ruvy
we also send more foreign aid to Israel "roughly $5 billion per year, all of it money we have to borrow"
Joe,
I'm very specific about you guys cutting off that "aid" to Israel. That would the best thing you could do for us. Cut off the aid Egypt gets, too. That will save you another $3-$4 billion a year.
If you guys nuke Riyadh and Tehran - one good 5 megaton blast a piece should do it - everyone will sit up and remember never to mess with the Americans. There is a secondary message that will be sent as well - especially to all those Chinese who think they have you over a barrel. The message will be "be nice to the American debtor lest he get mad at you and turn you to nuclear glass".
If we do it, everyone will try to use their nukes to wipe us out. They won't succeed - but it will be a far bigger mess.
Either way, the bottom line is this. In the end, to save your butts, you need to bite the nasty bullet and do what has to be done. Or eventually we will. Better that you do it - you can control the world's responses better.
Have a good one. Good article, by the way.
5 - zingzing
ruvy, your own brain must be telling you that something is wrong when you think it's a good and necessary thing to kill millions of people and live by fear. "do as we say or we'll annihilate you! we are the great ruler of the world! yeah, we owe you money, but you can forget about that, unless you want your metaphorical legs broken. by that we mean that we'll kill your country, of course." does that sound reasonable to you? i hope not.
"Better that you do it - you can control the world's responses better."
don't ask us any favors. do your own dirty work. (don't.)
"If we do it, everyone will try to use their nukes to wipe us out. They won't succeed - but it will be a far bigger mess."
that's why you won't do it. nukes only work when you don't use them.
"In the end, to save your butts, you need to bite the nasty bullet and do what has to be done. Or eventually we will."
it doesn't have to been done, of course. and you'd have to be flat out retarded. not that politics in the middle east are anything but...
6 - Baronius
Brett Favre still gets work because he's a better quarterback than most. If the US backs away from its role as the world's policeman, who will take over? Chavez, Putin, the Sauds, Iran, China, and the EU are the most likely to emerge as hegemonic powers in various parts of the world. Europe and a free Iran are the only ones I'd theoretically trust.
What we can do is nudge NATO to pay more, and allow/encourage Japan to re-arm. But we've got no leverage.
7 - zingzing
"Brett Favre still gets work because he's a better quarterback than most."
damn right! vikings! 9-1! it just goes to show i can change my opinions. i used to have a picture on my desktop of favre looking really, really sad (when they lost to the vikings a few years back), but i am of a different mind now.
but i dunno. we tend to fuck up as much as we fix things. maybe more. so maybe we're none too good at the job. no favre's are we.
8 - Glenn Contrarian
Baronius -
You are partially right - nature abhors a vacuum...and this applies to political power as well. The very presence of our troops in South Korea and in Europe precludes a lot of violence. The presence of our military all over Southeast Asia (Singapore, Guam, Okinawa, Japan, etc.) has probably prevented China from invading Taiwan.
No one could do this except for America.
Be that as it may, it makes a LOT more sense to significantly downsize our armed forces...and particularly prevent ourselves from conducting preemptive invasions based on assumptions that ignore the available intelligence, and prosecute those who ordered such an invasion (and the subsequent torture) on war crimes charges at the Hague.
Yes, so long as we are able to do so, America must do its part to keep the peace - and our military strength is part of what enables us to do so. BUT we cannot do so by throwing our weight around and threatening "do what we say or we'll bring democracy to you, too!"
9 - Glenn Contrarian
Ruvy -
Sir (in place of 'dude'), you need some Prozac. Bad.
Either that, or move to Pattaya, Thailand - you'd forget all about your anger at the rest of humanity.
10 - Ruvy
zing, Glenn,
The problem with both of you - and with the lot of you who are infected with this disease of political correctness, no matter what your alleged ideology is - is very simple. You refuse to look reality in the face. The Wahhabi extremists in Arabia - whether they be al-Qaeda or the monarchy - and the Shi'a extemists in Persia - and the whole terror structure they support across the Middle East - are human trash of the most dangerous kind. Either you destroy them, or they destroy you.
When you fail to call a terrorist by his right name - or a murderer by his right name - you refuse to acknowledge truth. When your refuse to acknowledge truth, eventually truth has a nasty way of teaching you not to ignore it.
One lesson was the destruction of the World Trade Center. You refused to acknowledge the danger of the enemy when they struck you in 1993. You did not destroy them then, when you were a lot stronger then you were to be in 2001. You did not destroy them in September 2001, when they blew two buildings out of the sky, and when you were a lot stronger than you are now. The evil remains, yet you fear to name it! This human trash has spread its disease of hatred over the last decade, yet you fear to acknowledge it! Your own fear will kill you.
You've abandoned your strength and allowed mere monkeys of hatred to grow from capuchins to rhesuses - and finally to huge apes that you can not dislodge easily from their lairs without terrible damage to yourselves. This is exactly what happened in the 1930's, when you ignored Hitler. And still, 150 million deaths later, you have not learned. Joe Flynn wants to walk away from it all because he sees that the strength you used to have is all gone - and he understands that you are all tapped out. Another reality you refuse to acknowledge, Glenn.
The fault is on your heads, gentlemen. The evil is on your heads; it will kill you, as surely as the sun rises in the east.
11 - zingzing
ruvy, is the name of this evil "tehran?" is it "riyadh?" no, it is not. yet that (and every man, woman and child in it) is what you want to destroy. what you suggest will not only make yourself evil, it will make what you think is evil spread like wildfire.
what you see as "truth," we (rightfully) see as stupid and wrong.
there is evil, and we know who and what it is. but this evil isn't the kind that you can just plop and finger on a map and say "there be evil." this evil is ideological, not territorial. it exists within places that are not evil.
your logic is so twisted and malformed (and evil) that it can't see its own faults. you can't bomb terrorism away. you can't make it fear you--it lives on fear. that's what makes it so effective. how you miss this is beyond me.
you're completely over the edge. you're just as bad as they are. you want them to fear you? you want to be a terrorist yourself. you flat out are a terrorist, if this is what you desire. "fight fire with fire," you'll say, but then who is the good guy? you really do want the apocalypse to come in your time, don't you? well, your time is done before mine is, and i don't want your stupid apocalypse.
12 - Ruvy
zing,
The "good guy" is the one who continues to live when G-d judges the earth. But until then, those who will kill you, will certainly not spare their efforts.
Whether you like this fact is irrelevant to me. Whether you reject this fact is irrelevant to me. Whether you want this apocalypse or not is irrelevant to me. The funerals at terror attacks in your country are my proof. I do not need your agreement to those funerals. They occur whether you agree or not. The silence in the cemeteries after the funerals - the weeping of mourners - speaks louder than all the noise and bullshit you throw around.
Until you kill the terrorists in your land - until we kill the terrorists in ours - they will continue to kill us, and do their best to kill us. If you can't see the obvious, it is you who needs the rubber room, not me.
13 - zingzing
ruvy: "The "good guy" is the one who continues to live when G-d judges the earth."
see, i don't believe that. or at least that's not how i live my life. i'm not waiting on god's judgment, i just try to live a good life. wanting to kill innocent people doesn't qualify for me.
"Whether you like this fact is irrelevant to me. Whether you reject this fact is irrelevant to me. Whether you want this apocalypse or not is irrelevant to me. "
i don't think that's healthy.
"The funerals at terror attacks in your country are my proof. I do not need your agreement to those funerals. They occur whether you agree or not. The silence in the cemeteries after the funerals - the weeping of mourners - speaks louder than all the noise and bullshit you throw around."
but you want to answer that with more death! your only answer is death. can't you see how wrong that is?
"If you can't see the obvious, it is you who needs the rubber room, not me."
but you can't see how obviously wrong your conclusions are. your train of thought leads you to mass annihilation of innocent people for the purpose of instilling fear, WHICH IS TERRORISM! it's genocide. it's murder, and a million more sins.
good god, if you can't see how that goes against your basic beliefs... look, even if it saves our collective ass, you're damned. your god is their god too, and he doesn't like it when you do shit like that. you won't be one of those standing at the end of days, should that ever come to pass.
i just can't see how you've become this way.
14 - zingzing
alright. i find the idea of nuking any city repulsive. but. i want to know how, exactly, you can justify, on any grounds, killing innocent people.
politically, it stinks. morally, it's rotten. religiously, it goes against everything you've been taught (unless judaism suddenly became a violent religion).
what, if anything, gives you any inkling of thought that this is the right thing to do?
99% of the victims in your little plan would be innocent of any crime against you. so HOW can you justify it?
15 - Ruvy
politically, it stinks. morally, it's rotten. religiously, it goes against everything you've been taught (unless judaism suddenly became a violent religion). what, if anything, gives you any inkling of thought that this is the right thing to do?
It's simple, zing. The Wahhabi have a creed of killing you off - YOU! YOU are not a believer. Either you agree with them or you die. The Wahhabi are centered in Riyadh. That is their main base, where they get their inspiration, their ideas, etc. etc.
The choice is destroy that main base - or die.
The same is true for Tehran - the Shi'a have a creed that they have to bring in the Mahdi to rule the world. If you are not a Shi'a, you get to die, or pay the jizya, the dhimmi tax.
I don't give a damn what you call my choice, zing. I don't care whether you think my choice stinks or not. That's irrelevant to me. MY choice is to live free or die - maybe you recognize that from somewhere (though I doubt it).
It is a very real choice for me - I can see a mosque across the valley, and still remember my friend and neighbor having to go to the hospital for treatment a couple of weeks back because the bastards inspired by hatred fomented in that mosque threw rocks at his windshield as he was driving home. The prick in the mosque fomenting Arab violence gets his inspiration ultimately from the pustule of Wahhabi hatred, Riyadh. So I want them to die - I intend to live. The prick in the mosque realizes that his inspiration is now nuclear glass - he gets the hint. If he is too stupid to, eventually, I will have to kill the bastard - before he kills me. I intend to live.
The same is true for the Shi'a bastards who want to kill us off - but are presently occupied fighting the Wahhabi in Yemen. They have called for my death. So, I want them to die - I intend to live.
The first rule in Judaism is to LIVE to fulfill the commandments. I intend to live.
I know you have problems with that. Those are your problems. But I intend to live. Is that clear?
16 - zingzing
"It's simple, zing. The Wahhabi have a creed of killing you off - YOU! ... The Wahhabi are centered in Riyadh."
but not everyone in riyadh is wahhabi. so what do you do with the rest of them? your answer to that question is disturbing. to make it clear, i have no problem with killing people who are going to kill you if you don't kill them. but THINGS ARE NOT THAT SIMPLE.
"The choice is destroy that main base - or die."
fine. no need to bomb innocent people, right? RIGHT?
"The same is true for Tehran"
NO IT'S NOT! that's the thing. not everyone in tehran wants to kill you, ruvy. most of them are fine HUMAN BEINGS living their lives. you have no right to kill them because of their proximity to a few that do. to think you do is sick.
"MY choice is to live free or die - maybe you recognize that from somewhere (though I doubt it)."
jesus christ, ruvy. it's a fucking license plate. of course i recognize it. i also know that that statement was made by an old man too sick to say it in public.
"But I intend to live. Is that clear?"
but you can't see any way of living without killing innocent people? some life. why live it?
17 - Glenn Contrarian
Ruvy -
You don't solve problems by nuking a city...because by doing so you kill hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that against Judaism? That in and of itself should give you pause, besides the fact that you would earn the everlasting hatred of over a billion people.
18 - zingzing
it's getting to the point where i think ruvy might actually do something stupid...
you have kids, ruvy, so back off of your rhetoric--i hope that's what it is--before it consumes you. you're letting your own mind turn you into what you want to fight.
19 - Ruvy
You don't solve problems by nuking a city...because by doing so you kill hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that against Judaism? That in and of itself should give you pause, besides the fact that you would earn the everlasting hatred of over a billion people.
Let's take this from the bottom and work our way up. At least by nuking our enemies we would earn the everlasting hatred of our enemies. Right now we have that same everlasting hatred - unearned. So, the world hates us. BFD. They've hated us for 2,500 years, so if they hate us for another 2,500 years, why should we care? The point is not that they hate us, but that they would now be afraid of us. The ugly little Jew they have kicked around for millennia will have burned them in the nuclear hell they have wished upon us. That's intimidating, Glenn. If I'm going to be hated, let the bastards who hate me fear me as well. That way we all get to live in peace.
Innocent women and children? These are people who hate me and want me to die, simply because of who I am. The mere fact that such hatred comes from a child or a woman does not make the hater innocent (This argument applies to Riyadh only).
Finally, destroying the enemy utterly is very much Judaism. Read the Book of Joshua, Glenn. Read carefully and well. The writer criticizes the Children of Israel for not continuing to destroy the enemy in Canaan.
Finally, for zing, I can get along very well without nuking people - who don't want me to die....
20 - zingzing
you're sick, ruvy. time to see a doctor.
21 - Ruvy
I saw a doctor a couple of days ago. This doctor prescribed a capsule for a debilitating cough, and would probably prescribe the nuthouse for you, zing. His daughter was killed in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem some years ago, and whatever his own political views, he'd view you as pathetically naĂŻve, as well as pathetic.
Just as I do.
22 - zingzing
sorry for your doctor, sorry for you. sorry i don't live in the warzone you do. sorry i don't think you've made the right decisions in your life. sorry you can't see how wrong you are. sorry i don't think killing hundreds of thousands is the answer.
what is wrong with you? do you think that iran's leaders are right to say you should be wiped off the map? what do you think they would think about you? if they are wrong, why aren't you?
23 - Ruvy
you have kids, ruvy, so back off of your rhetoric
Wake up, zing. Nuking an enemy means that my kids do not have to risk going into a battle zone to die for nothing. I don't recommending nuking cities because I like to see nuclear destruction - I recommend it to cut the risk to OUR soldiers. I'm a father, and I do not want to see my sons lives lost because some damn fool idiot in the IDF is handcuffed by the Jew-hating bastards in your government. I've seen that plenty already.
I also don't want to see Jews killing Israeli soldiers who try to expel Jews from their homes to please your damned government, but I fear I will see this. Frankly, given the choice, I'd rather see Americans try to do that evil task: my conscience would be clear shooting and killing them. At least I would not have to kill fellow Jews.
24 - Ruvy
i don't think you've made the right decisions in your life. sorry you can't see how wrong you are.
A friend of mine let his son go to Australia, where he had been raised himself. The kid got back from Oz and screamed at his father, "why did you raise us here and not in Australia?!!"
My sons were raised in Saint Paul. We came here eight years ago, going on nine now. My younger one, the one who I know will have to go into the army, told me of his and his girlfriend feel about the country - it is by this song, ein li Ă©retz aHĂ©ret (I Have No Other Country). I feel pretty much the same way. And my roots in the States (such as they are) are considerably deeper than his. A neighbor of mine, whose ancestors arrived in the United States around 1740, who has relatives who fought in the American Revolution, and others who fought in the Civil War, feels the same way I do.
We're HOME zing, done with your pathetic exile and the setting sun that is the United States of America.
HOME.... Boy, does that have a good sound to it!
And your government's interference, your government's military bases, your government's financial aid - all of it - is unwelcome here.
25 - Joseph Flynn
Gentlemen, a few comments, if I may. I've been sleeping and I have to get to my day job soon. But here are some thoughts.
First of all, Ruvy, the U.S. would be in relatively great shape if we were merely tapped out. We're massively in debt and we continue to accumulate mountains of further indebtedness.
Two-thirds of these obligations are directly attributable to three Republican presidents: Reagan, Bush and Bush. Bush Jr. left us in a situation analogous to the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. Obama, whom you clearly seem to dislike, is doing his best to refloat the ship.
The point of my post is that we can't afford to be the world's cop anymore, not just financially but morally. Things have gotten to the point where some of our politicians can't stand the idea of there being a war anywhere in the world without us taking part in it. John McCain was talking in 2008 as if we should send troops to Georgia to fight the Russians. Which is lunacy.
What I see as the current, legitimate defense perimeter for the U.S. is: our country first, I'm sure you understand that sentiment; North America next; and the Caribbean basin to finish. That would require us to shield an area from Hawaii to the Arctic to the approaches to South America.
Quite a lot of the world but far more manageable than what we're trying to do now. We'd have more resources to defend our borders, seaports, and airports. We'd have more money to have the FBI watch suspicious people who are already inside our country. In short, we'd be safer. Which I'm sure is what you want for your country, too.
But you make my exact point in your most recent post, number 23 by the site's count. You'd rather see the Americans do your dirty work for you. Sorry, that's just what I'm arguing against. Let every advanced country do, and pay for, its own disagreeable tasks. We've done the heavy lifting for far too long.
You do raise some interesting points. On September 11, 2001, after watching the attacks on NYC, Washington, DC, and the crash of Flight 93, I wanted blood. It's a normal reaction.
Instead, I did what I could. I donated blood. I sent money to help the families of the victims. It was giving money that got me to thinking of how best to defeat the people who hate us, the U.S. as well as Israel: Defund them.
Terrorist networks depend on huge sums of money to operate. That money comes from selling oil to the world. So let's stop using oil. Scientists in the U.S. are working hard on this; I understand Israel is doing interesting things in this field, too.
About nukes: There are way too many drawbacks to use such weapons for any situation short of national survival. First, it gives everyone license to use them, and there are more than enough nuclear weapons in the world to destroy humanity several times over. You don't want to start that kind of chain reaction or nobody has a future. Second, even if you limited the bombing to one or two specific targets, there's no way to contain the radioactive fallout. The wind would blow lethal radioactive waste all around the world, which any country adversely affected would rightly consider an act of war.
My opinion remains that the threat of overwhelming conventional attacks, deterrence, is the best way to prevent terrorists from striking. I think threatening national capitals is appropriate. Flight 93 was said to be head for the U.S. Capitol. The countries that sponsor terrorism should know that their cities are at risk if they target us.
But, again, this is something that should be made clear in advance of any actual strike. The idea is to keep people from getting killed. That way no vengeance is required.