10 years without America

Abandoning Iraqis to be slaughtered by their fellow muslims sounds heartless and un-American, and it probably is. Yet in all honesty I can't say that I care very much. If history is any guide, our sacrifice will not earn us much gratitute, and whetever little there will be, it will be short-lived. Just consider history as recent as the Kosovo war. If it weren't for the American initiative and leadership, the Europeans would have kept watching the Serbs "ethnically cleanse" Kosovo, until not a single moslem would have been left alive in the province. Did this win us any "brownie points" in the so-called "islamic world"? Don't bet on it. In Europe then? You must be kidding.

One could argue that the sacrifice in Kosovo wasn't that big. We just bombed the Serbs relentlessly for weeks, with almost no risk to the NATO forces, so it was just a matter of paying for the bombs. Well, maybe, but we might have done nothing at all - after all, Kosovo was of no strategic significance to the United States. And what about the II World War, where the sacrifice was enormous? Judging from the anti-Americanism so prevalent in Western Europe these days, someone not very familiar with the XXth century history would likely conclude that the USA must have been the occupier, and not the liberator. The Poles have less hatred toward the Russians, who tried for 200 years to forcibly assimilate a big chunk of Poland, and then, from 1945 till 1989 practically turned the whole country into a "17th Soviet Republic", than the French or the Germans now openly express toward the United States.

I wish we granted that troll Hugo Chavez his wish ("Yankees go home!") and went home, indeed. Let's give the Europeans the chance to defend themselves. (It is going to be quite a funny spectacle to watch them do it. Any tinpot dictator half as arrogant as Yugoslavia's Milosevic will be able to wrap them around his finger. They'll eventually adopt sharia as their law, in the hope that the jihadists will stop sending suicide bombers into European cities.) Let's have the UN continue to deal with the genocide in Sudan in the same brave and decisive way it's been doing so far (i.e. not doing a damn thing). Let's allow North and South Koreans to be finally re-united ander the enlightened leadership of the Great Leader Kim Jong Il.

There was a movie last year in the US entitled "A Day Without a Mexican", showing a fictionalized collapse of most basic services in this country as a result of all the Latino workers (legal and illegal) not being there to perform them. Wouldn't a movie "10 Years Without America" be far more interesting, not to mention scary? It's not hard to imagine the mayhem unleashed, were the United States to disengage from the world's affairs and let the chips fall where they may. That's what many around the world seem to be clamoring for - why not give it to them? Just for ten years. And then come and clean up the smoldering mess. I'm certain of one thing: the anti-American liberals in Europe and elsewhere would not survive such a world. That's "poetic justice" for you.