Perhaps a little timidity is in order, or at least a little introspective thought. As Eugene Robinson said in his article of 3 March ”...even as we condemn Moscow for its outrageous aggression, we reserve the right to fire deadly missiles into Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and who knows where else”.
We are involved in two ongoing wars, uncounted smaller battles and “drug wars”, have troops scattered over the entire globe and have maintained them for over 50 years in some cases. Our military (excuse me “defense”) budget that is greater than, what is it now, more than that of the COMBINED budgets of the next 26 worlds largest and that includes both Russia and China! And we want to increase it to even greater magnitude regardless of the detriment to our own social and infrastructure programs. As if getting involved in another pointless local conflict would make a difference particularly since there is some question about how the new Ukraine government came to power, who actually is in power and whether or not supporting the overthrow of a democratically elected government, no matter how much you do not like it, is the morally right thing to do.
It is irritating when I hear the right bemoan the fact that America has lost the respect of the world. They seem to have difficulty discerning the difference between fear and respect; and perhaps that is the real problem. The world no longer fears “respects” us the way the right thinks it should.
We should be a little less hypocritical and admit that, since it is certainly a lot easier to achieve than the respect thing, we are ok with the fear thing. Either that or perhaps cut back on the fear factor and try earning the worlds respect for a change.