I have a cleaning lady. She comes once a month. In fact, she'll be cleaning my place this week...
In anticipation of her arrival, I haven’t done any dishes for days. My cloths are polluting my bedroom like collateral damage...
My pots and pans still have three day-old remnants of scrambled eggs sticking to them...
Garbage cans and recycling bins are likely to volcanically erupt they are so overflowing...
And no, I'm not normally a slob. But maybe my cleaning lady assumes I am. Because I know she is coming, I ease up on my cleaning responsibilities. I don't mind giving her more work -- that's what I hire her for, of course ...
If she came once a week would I be a slob all the time?
Maybe.
Ok. Probably.
Why not?
Often times, the rest of the world sees America as its cleaning lady...
"We don’t need to worry about cleaning up after ourselves, we can rely on America."
"We can appease dictators. Because America will clean up if our strategy of appeasement ultimately fails. Of course, we can go to bed feeling good about ourselves -- because we stand for peace (even though our placating generally leads to war)."
"We can be Western Europe and decimate our military capability. We can turn our military to a welfare system where the average age is double that of the U.S. military and where personnel are 80% of our costs. Because we know we are never going to fight. We can count on America."
"There's a problem in Liberia ... we want America to send troops. There's a situation in Haiti ... America -- can you send some of your nice troops? We've got to keep American troops in Germany, in South Korea, in Bosnia, in Columbia ..."
"We can propose impractical treaties in Kyoto because we know America will save us by taking an unpopular stand that we do not have to take in front of our people."
Just like the anticipation of my cleaning lady, the world can act like a slob because it knows that it has the vacuum-wielding, Windex-toting, bleach-carrying, duster-brandishing, Tilex-sporting America ready to pounce when needed. Yes, it is America-on-demand. The USA is like the Wolf from Pulp Fiction -- we'll be there in 10 minutes to clean up your mess ... even when you mistakenly blow your friend's brains out ...
I'm not implying that there is any other alternative ... only pointing out America's situation. America certainly shouldn’t shrink from helping to make the world a better place. We owe it to our fellow man to continue to act with a kind heart and be the strong parent (and not the one that's always letting little Tommy replace dinner with two desserts).
And as the world of terror unfortunately gets bloodier, this "us against them" will fall more and more on America's shoulders -- with the rest of the world rooting for us and against us at the same time.
Rooting against us to appease the terrorists, the dictators, and the oil hoarders. And rooting for us because ... well, because ... if America retracts then they will have to actually step up and take responsibility.
And who wants to take responsibility?
Not me ... I have the cleaning lady coming this week.