I don't recall the world happy for a passive America in the 1990s when Europe was unable to police the break up of Yugoslavia. Nor do I remember the world eager for us to leave Somalia and Rwanda alone, letting the UN or Africans address those crises. Funny enough we got grief where we intervened and grief where we didn't. Funny how that works.
But that was then, I guess.
Now the sainted international community (and their local auxiliaries here) is eager to hear more from our president on our self-criticism tour:
This new era requires America be brought down several notches, laid low by the frustrations and envies of rivals, taught a lesson about excessive pride. Our president is more than glad to direct us to this new humility. It is evident in his economic strategies, which liquefy wealth in a blender of socialism and environmental extremism. It is evident in his foreign policy, which kowtows to tyrants and comforts terrorists with the assurance of an America ready to step down as alpha male to become just another animal in the pack.
This is supposed to make the world like us better. It may, in the short term, until the dictators given room to breathe by an enfeebled America choose to broaden their adventures.
And when that time comes - and the world turns to America, as it has for centuries, only to find that we are no longer a superpower but just an ordinary neighbor - I hope those who favored and helped raise the curtain on the "post-American" world are stricken with a horror and regret that only the great tragedies of history can impart.
Yeah, this will work out just swell, I'm sure.
UPDATE: Steyn hits it well:
It's interesting how easily the Obama definition of "Never again" fits that kind of passivity. Two of the three "causes for hope" the president cites — Rwanda, Sudan — are textbook "Never again" scenarios that roll around again and again and again. In fact, Darfur is still ongoing, so to congratulate yourself merely because some American high-schoolers have formed "Save Darfur" chapters looks at best like moral preening and at worst like the kind of feeble passivity that enabled the Holocaust first time round. It's grand to be a member of the Grade Ten "Save Darfur" campaign, not so good to be back in Darfur wondering when the actual saving's going to start. If "Never again" now means "Bake sales against genocide," we're all doomed.
If even America is sinking into European weepy passivity in the face of evil, what hope is there for the West?
America alone? That's starting to look like the best case scenario.
