SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - This will end well...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oberon (Post 2231769)

He's getting enough flak for not throwing Israel to the sharks, a couple of Hellfires on artillery pieces in Iraq throws the news networks a bone in a different direction while Biden tries (and fails) to work something out in Tel Aviv.
Honestly, the problem with being the worlds policeman, and you can't deny that America has not enjoyed that role from time to time over the years, taking a sense of self-superiority in being 'the man' or 'the fixer' when things went wrong in the Balkans or when Saddam stepped out of line, but the problem is, is that the responsibility doesn't go away when it's inconvenient. America has built this reputation up for itself over the past century that it's the 'good guy' who sticks up for the 'little guy', it's part of the American ethos, they enforce morals and take out 'the bad guys'.
Now while this ethos has been severely strained by the 'War on Terror' to the point where the American people just want the world to leave them alone, you can't shift a century of global perception in a decade.
Thus there will be a steadily declining expectation that America will have to act, especially since it is America that created the vacuum into which the IS is expanding. If America sat back and did nothing then its global standing and reputation would be damaged, and that's something that is not easily earnt back. So America has to make a token effort really, and aerial strikes are probably the best way of doing this, and if the US military has sense, they'll use mainly drones in the aerial campaign to a) keep costs down and b) reduce casualties should one be shot down.

Ahh who cares about our global standing, everybody hates us anyways. Whenever we try to pretend like we understand the situation in these foreign countries, we make asses of ourselves and end up making things worse. I could care less about our image, there never seems to be an end to the foreigners scolding the U.S. for getting involved in other country's business. We need to stop pretending like we can throw money and bombs at a situation until it goes away, and its about time we stop feeding the grotesquely expensive military-industrial complex that we just recklessly dump money into. Yes, it might be messed up that we did all these things to "help" Iraq and now want to wash our hands of them, but we need to cut our losses while we can. Being the world policeman is too expensive and too difficult to sustain, and whether gradually or suddenly, the U.S. wouldve eventually fallen out of the role anyway.

Maybe the U.N. can actually pick up the slack like its supposed to.