BCBrian,
While I don't know exactly what Shreck meant, I know that the world thought it was a good idea to put restrictions on Saddam Hussein with the expectation that those restrictions would be enforced, by force if necessary. Saddam breached those conditions, repeatedly, and most of the world, especially those who were profiting from Saddam's games with the "Oil for Food" program, were unwilling to back up with their blood and wealth what they had originally declared. With much of the world lacking the will to enforce what they had said was essential for Saddam maintaining his place in the world, the U.S. was forced once again to do the heavy lifting for the rest of the world. NOTHING would have changed if we'd waited another year, two years, or five years before acting.
The U.S. doing the heavy lifting has been a constant theme for the past 200+ years. We asked to be left alone throughout the first 40 years of the 20th century, but the European powers wouldn't allow it, and after our having to decide two world wars we concluded that we had better start taking a more active role in Europe and elsewhere or else we would be fixing European messes every 20 years or so in perpetuity.
How has the U.S. of A done the world's heavy lifting for more than 200 years you may ask, when it wasn't until the 20th century that the U.S. was considered to be a world power? We were the ones who first threw off the yoke of British oppression (yes, with the help of Britain's enemies including the French and the Poles), defeating the British in a manner the French were never able to do on their own, and our resulting republic shined the bright light of representative government as an example of what could be a more just form of government with God's providence.
We were the ones who decided that paying tribute to the Barbary Pirates (Muslim terrorists of an earlier generation) wasn't the way things should be and sent a task force to northern Africa to let them know we weren't going to take it anymore, despite other larger and more powerful countries being too scared to take them on.
We were the ones that issued the proclamation that European powers shouldn't meddle in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere (via the Monroe Doctrine) and enforced it with the end result that after many difficult decades democratically elected government has taken firm root in every country in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba, and we're working on Cuba without apparent help from anybody else.
Fast forward to a European war in the early 20th century that was a stalemate until the Yanks arrived. Yes, the British Commonwealth nations got involved before we did, but we hadn't been part of the British Empire for over 100 years and had no obligation to involve ourselves in a mess that wasn't of our making.
Twenty years later, the massive screw-up that the European powers made in trying to punish Imperial Germany for the Great War came back to bite them in the rear. Who had to decide the matter on the side of freedom vs. the side of tyranny? Again we did.
In the Cold War, who supplied the bulk of the personnel and money in the fight against totalitarian socialist world domination designs? Again, we did.
Now we've always been a little uncomfortable and reluctant in projecting our power, but to those much has been given, much is required, and we've done more than our part through history. That naturally elicits a range of emotions from the rest of the world, ranging from awe and respect to jealousy and bitterness.
History will judge the actions that the U.S. has taken in Iraq, but when there is a representative, democratically elected government in an Arab nation, I believe history will judge favorably. You have the right to have a different opinion, even though such rights seem to be quickly eroding in Canada.
No doubt, Canada is becoming more of a European country than an American (meaning North/South American) country. I understand the need for Canada to assert its independence from its big brother to the south, and that's fine. However, as Canada moves closer to Europe than to the U.S., the understanding gap for Canadians will only grow. The Europeans have never quite understood us, and it's probably better that way because if they understood us I would be concerned that we had become too much like the God-less bunch they have become.
The world still depends on the U.S. to do the heavy lifting regardless of whether the rest of the world has the courage to do the dirty work they set out beforehand, and I expect we'll continue to do the sometimes thankless work of promoting justice, freedom, and democracy throughout the world until the Lord returns. I don't think that we should invade countries when we're not provoked simply because they have a tyrant in charge, but there was more than sufficient reason from the U.N. resolutions for the U.S. to enforce the resolutions by the only means that would make Iraq comply -- by force. The end result is the world is going to be a better place, even if the immediate short-term is difficult.
