The Bush Who Cried 'Wolf'

I think one of the main roots of our troubles began when we started defending "America's Interests" overseas. We're all for self-determinism until a country crosses us. We did pretty good for ourselves in that first 150 years. I'd ask, what happened to change it, was it Roosevelt and his 'Speak softly and carry a big stick" speech? Your question about when to intervene is apt. At some point, we had so much potential power, we started asking why should we put up with these behaviors when we have the means to enforce our will? We didn't mind looking the other way with the whole invasion of Columbia to create Panama and it's been downhill from there. What do the poor countries do? Without the resources to throw around the world they actually have to get along with their neighbors and even _talk_ with them. That gives me an idea. What if we characterized the debate like apartment dwellers who share a wall/floor. When one of them becomes disruptive, what are the appropriate responses? The initial stages are normally to talk to the neighbor to resolve the problem. If that does not help then we can petition ever higher authorities to take action on our behalf. That's all well and good but doesn't exactly fit the situation we're discussing. Let's change things around a bit and talk about an apartment complex in which the owner lives in one of the units. Let's also change the scenarios to clarify the difference. In this scenario the problem neighbor is the apartment owner. If you lived in another unit of the same complex, you'd have to deal with your landlord in such a way that if you were to get on his bad side, you could find yourself without a place to live. The landlord wields power disporportionately compared to just another tenant. Now, let's say that the landlord, which I'll call "Laurie" doesn't like you. It wouldn't matter if you were as quiet as a churchmouse or as on-time with your rent as a Swiss watch. Laurie could refuse to renew your lease for any reason and there isn't much you could do about it. What does this have to do with the U.S. use of power on the global stage? Bear with me because I'm headed to a point here. If Craig owned his own apartment complex, he wouldn't necessarily care about how Laurie treats her renters but if Laurie were to convince Craig that a particular renter, Kelly, was a troublemaker then Kelly could find himself with fewer and fewer options but to capitulate to Laurie.

Here is the Geo-Political connection. At what point would Craig stop listening to Laurie and give Kelly a fair shake regardless of what Laurie says? If Laurie is the U.S. then she should be careful how much of her weight she throws around because the loss of her reputation among apartment-owning circles isn't that apparent at first. The question she should ask herself is whether a particular outcome will increase or decrease her influence and whether repeated uses of her influence could create a situation where the other owners turn a deaf ear to her requests. If she were to appear to be unfair to her own tenants, that might influence the other owners, much like the boy who cries wolf.

The U.S. needs to treat it's foreign influence like a rare and precious thing. Horded and collected, it becomes desired and respected e.g. financial advice from Warren Buffet; diluted and dispersed everywhere, it becomes cheap and ignored, e.g. paper money from a government who won't stop printing more and more money. So what if Hamas won an election, isn't the principle of elections more important than which party won? We're so interested in elections in Iraq but we're shown as hypocrites when Hamas wins a fair election and we refuse to aid to a government to which we've previously pledged our support. We show through our actions just how much we believe in free and fair elections so we should not be surprised when our foreign influence wanes.