Actually, seems to me we were asked. At least that's what Churchill seems to indicate. Three questions: (1) Does the free world need a policeman? (2) If so, since WW II, who, other than the U.S. has had the ability to be the world's policeman? (3) Without a world policeman, what would the world look like?
Regarding the second part of your paragraph, I certainly agree. I'd be happy to see an acknowledged dictator in parts of Palestine. "Democracy" didn't work out so well for those folks. Of course, if you look back at history you find that democracy" rarely does work out well. That's why the U.S. has a republic. So far that's worked fairly well, but underneath the republic is a democracy full of people who've discovered that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. Mr. Tytler has educated us about the inevitable outcome of that problem.
1. Okay, you most certainly were asked during the years of WW2, but I am referring to more recent 'adventures' into the middle east where the justification is hard to see. Nobody invited either the US or the UK into Iraq; it had nothing to do with 9/11 which had everything to do with the totally biased positive position held towards the Palestinans' neighbour for reasons that, I suppose, are reflected in the power makeup of the US and, I guess, the rest of the international money business. You can mess around with the definitions as much as you like, but the truth is that if you constantly back one side against the other, the other is going to start seeing you as simply another part of the original enemy, which is exactly what happened, and the UK allowed itself to be suckered in too. I don't think all those other western governments were just being cowardly, and as has been pointed out many times, Afghanistan and Mexico would lose their drug incomes overnight if the 'civilized' world took the
domestic drug industry seriously and broke a few skulls back home. Now that would be a domestic fight worth fighting! It will not happen.
2. Nobody.
3. Well, the far east would look much the same - the US lost in Vietnam despite massive power and North Korea is still truckin' as before, with a southern boat sunk as I write, with or without northern help. Further south in the direction of Australia the Moslem population is the largest in the world and nobody is going to mess with that! The eastern European/Balkan nations have always been in turmoil and neither NATO, the UN nor any credible EEC alternative seems to be capable of pleasing all of the combatants all of the time. Turkey is playing footsie with the west because it hopes to get into the EEC which, in turn, is terrified to let it in in case that opens the floodgates to the entire middle east cutting across the borders too via a Turkish doorway, yet fears sayin 'no' in case military access to Iraq is then denied. The USSR reputedly fell apart from within because it couldn't finance the military any longer - check echoes of the state of the UK today! - China is rapidly turning into the new America and I would seriously question it has any desire to suicide any time soon! The middle east would be the mess it always has been, or perhaps it might have resolved itself on the basis of regional power which, of course, isn't the equation today because one party has the might of America at its beck and call.
By the way, I think that these bits of thread are what make LuLa such an exceptionally valuable proposition: there is so much more here than just friggin' cameras and pixels and most of us are able to express an opinion reasonably politely!
Rob C