[robowombat]

The United States, as a super power and the beneficiary of an anomalous revolution resulting in personal liberty, has a moral responsibility to bear any burden to spread the ideals to which we aspire, not only in Egypt and Tunisia, but throughout the Middle East.

The first statement is correct. The American Revolution was an anomalous and not to be replicated event the rest is vintage world saver Wilsonian globalony. We do not as a nation have an obligation to do anything for anybody. We do have an obligation to our citizens to defend ourselves from enemies and to pursue national interests which ought be concrete, discrete, and explainable not to engage in endless crusades to institute some sort of universalist ambitions. Many Americans like to believe we have some heaven sent mandate to save the world. This is a dangerous illusion. It muddled thinking about ends and means in the exercise of US interests. US leaders have spoken so much moralizing rubbish for so long in any discourse about foreign affairs and military operations that even though our leaders are a jaded, secularized and materialistic lot they have become so intellectually lazy that they, in many cases, can't even in their private discussions really frame an argument from national interest. The incredibly screwed up follow on to deposing the Saddam regime (for which there were some valid national interests in play)
is in large measure because of the lack of clarity about what our interests were and how to achieve them. The cartoonish, simplistic, moralizing cant that underlies the ‘we have a responsibility to bring enlightenment to the planet’ is both effrontery of the highest order and inherently damaging to pursuing real interests.

[Retain Mike]

Saying Americans believe they have some heaven sent mandate to save the world sounds like an isolationist position popular with whichever party is not currently holding the presidency. After WW II the Japanese saved Japan and the Germans saved Germany. People should understand the best one can hope to achieve is establishing an environment conducive to governments lasting more than one generation.

I think we have an obligation to base our foreign relations on the intangibles which define the best aspects of our character, and move on to real politick reluctantly. Otherwise prosecuting national interests means making a deal for access to economic resources with the ruling elite of the ascendant tribe for a generation, when the next revolution comes along.