Did you see Michael Mandelbaum on The Daily Show tonight?

[Up2Late]

So is this one of the new way the "Intellectual Republicans" are going to try to spin the new American Imperialism? This is the first time I've heard this guy, but it sounded like BS to me.

BUT, it gave me an new Idea, one that will DESTROY another leg of the already wobbly step stool that is the Republican Party.

WHAT IF... we begin pushing one of the key points of this guys book? The point which IS true, but I doubt too many "Red State" Americans realize, that the U.S. Tax payer, through the use of the U.S. Navy, pays almost ALL the costs of policing the world's Oceans and Sea lanes?

Here's a little known fact, now that the "threat" of the Soviet Unions Navy is gone, most of the world's nations, if they have one at all, only have small coastal or "brown water" Navies, that they use to patrol their own coastal waters! While we, the U.S.A. have 10 (soon to be 11) active duty Aircraft Carrier's (and all the smaller ships that travel with it in it's "Battle group"}, policing the world's Sea Lanes to keep them safe for Merchant Ships and world trade.

I might be hard to think all the way back to the 1990's, but one thing the ReThugs used to say (while President Clinton was in charge) was that we shouldn't have to be the "World's Police force," but that IS what we are now.

I think, if we could start reminding the "Red State" sheep about all the reasons that they were told they should vote Republican, back in the 90's by the Republicans, remind them of issues like this "World Police" thing, I think we could flip a LOT of the independents to our side. What do you think?

Below is most of the NY Times Book review of the book I'm talking about:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/books/review/05walker.html?ex=1299214800&en=5e00ad19848a3221&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss>

"The Case for Goliath," by Michael Mandelbaum
American World Order

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Review by MARTIN WALKER
Published: March 5, 2006

MICHAEL MANDELBAUM has taken all the fun out of an ostensibly flippant but fundamentally serious diplomatic parlor game. Usually played late at night when the Americans have gone home to prepare for their puritanically early start to the day, the Europeans, Latin Americans and Asians take a second glass of Cognac and imagine how awful the world could be if someone else were to take the place of the United States as the global hegemon.

Eastern Europeans tell sad anecdotes about living under Russian dominance. Western Europeans shudder at the thought of Germans running the benign and virtual empire that the United States has maintained and expanded for the past 60 years. (And they murmur that within the European Union the French are already being difficult enough.) The Latin Americans have their hands full with the arrogance of next-door neighbors like Brazil without wanting to see it become even more dominant. The idea of a Chinese hegemony sends shivers down the backs of all, particularly the Japanese and Indians; somebody usually mentions the mournful example of Tibet. The Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis react equally unhappily to the idea of India as superpower. As the diplomats prattle on, meanwhile, the British smile wryly and say they have been there, done that and are extremely glad to have lost the T-shirt.

Mandelbaum, the Christian A. Herter professor of American foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, pulls aside the curtain of diplomatic civility to expose the crude and obvious reality that everyone prefers to ignore, at least in public. He explains coolly and clearly the various ways in which the United States now functions as a global government, offering the planet the services of physical security, commercial regulation, financial stability and legal recourse that are normally provided by national governments to their citizens. Non-Americans naturally do not like to admit this, even as they enjoy the results, and American leaders do not like to spell it out, least of all to the voters who pay for it. But the evidence is clear. The network of military alliances (like NATO) and trade pacts (like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and international organizations (like the United Nations and World Bank and Group of 8) that the United States was mainly responsible for bringing to life has become an American-led global management system. It is familiar, inclusive and fairly unobtrusive. Its institutions provide a reasonable role for lesser powers, which is why the NATO alliance of consent survived and expanded while the wretched conscripts of the Warsaw Pact rebelled.

Above all, this system has been a remarkable and seductive economic success. Having built the tripartite trading structure of the modern world (North America, Western Europe and Japan) to enrich its citizens and allies and sustain the cold war, the generous Americans have expanded it to include the Asian tigers and Eastern Europeans. Now 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.1 billion Indians are clambering up the food chain to prosperity. They deal in dollars, raise money in the New York and London financial markets, generate big trade surpluses with the United States and then send their brighter and most ambitious children to American graduate and business schools, where they are exposed to the creeping osmosis of the Western value system. This is a magnificently benign loop, and will continue to be so once those American-trained graduates figure out how the biosphere is going to handle tens of millions of Asians living the American lifestyle, with their own cars and air conditioning and fast food....


(more at link below)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/books/review/05walker.html?ex=1299214800&en=5e00ad19848a3221&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss>