The World's Police

The snide remark keeps popping up, a rhetorical question, it appears, but mostly it's bait for an arguement they want you to join in: "Why do we have to be the World's Policeman?" For a brief moment, put yourself in someone else's shoes.... If you were a Jewish person in the Warsaw Ghetto in the late 1930s and early 1940's, would you accept the help of a "world policeman?" If you were a teacher in Cambodia in the mid-70's, would you accept the help of a "world policeman?" If you were a Hutu or a Tutsi tribal member in Central Africa in the 80's, or even today, would you accept the help of a "world policeman?" If you were a female on the streets of Baghdad in the 90's through 2003, would you accept the help of a "world policeman?" Think about it, or how historically, some of those situations have worked out. The very people who people who most often (in my experience) make this remark are all for having a law enforcing entity in their neighborhoods (psst! called "police"), providing them with protection from acts of theft, assault, rape and arson, yet somehow, to perform this duty for those who are to weak outside of our borders, for whatever reason, is objectionable to them. In a uni-polar world, if not us, with the blessing of a strong economy and a people who are trained to respect the person next to thme (and yes, sometimes we don't do that very well), then who will stand for the oppressed when situations of extreme immorality overtakes them?