Offers They Can’t Refuse

Chris Anderson has some criticisms of my newfound friends, the neocons. He says:

This is a foreign policy in which America’s primary role is that of a protection racket. People can go about there business, just so long as they don’t do anything that we don’t like. Then they better watch out! Look what we did to Sadaam!

And I say, what’s wrong with that? There is a lot wrong with the Mafia, as we all know, but they did bring order to unruly neighborhoods by selling their protection. We too will bring order to the world by laying out the rules under which nations may behave and then taking only the resources we absolutely need to maintain our hegemony. If they fail to behave (or give us these small tokens of respect) we will have to make an example of them. This is the very essence of the Pax Americana. Sometimes a little “knuckles de sandwich” is the price ‘o freedom, my friends.