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Well, we may have to agree to disagree on the "disgraceful" part, at least for now. Most of the examples brought up so far in this thread don't really qualify to my mind as bullying - Panama, for example. Here we have a country that now has an independent democratic government and full possession of a huge strategic asset we built and paid for. Not exactly the outcome of a "bullying" if I might so suggest. Moreover, (and a lot of people forget this) Noriega's "Dignity Battalions" really were bullies inasmuch as they deliberately provoked mumerous incidents against U.S. servicepeople in the weeks before the invasion and actually murdered two of them. Frankly, IMHO they got what they deserved.

I'm not suggesting our actions have been uniformly blameless. But nobody, and I mean nobody, was innocent in Yugoslavia, except maybe the poor people who got caught between Serbian and Albanian notions that they had a better idea of who ought to occupy bits of land than that land's present inhabitants. Don't forget that it was in those people's interest that we intervened, however badly we may have screwed up doing so. That isn't bullying.

Our support of the Shah in Iran was the exact opposite of bullying. It did not involve military intervention, and in fact we didn't even have forces in the area until the "students" decided to bully our embassy people, which they did in style and at length - 444 days, to be precise.

Nevertheless, I respect your opinion in the matter. I do think that we have to be careful stewards of this unprecedented power that has dropped into our laps.