The US as the world's policeman? Another bad idea from Dan Hodges

This appears to be a standalone Tweet from Dan Hodges, not a trailer for reasoned argument. Never mind I guess we could all write the piece for Dan if we put our minds to it. The style, if not the whole aphorism, is borrowed from Churchill who once said

 "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." In other words it ain't good, but any alternative is worse. 

The "might is right" argument is surely one of the most dangerous imaginable, but that is where Hodges is coming from. The US has the military power to be the "world's policeman" and nobody else has. True. Then, he would no doubt say, the US is a democracy so there are checks and balances. Well not really Dan, not really. When you were a spotty youth did you not listen to your Mum telling you about Vietnam? That was a policing operation as I recall that got, shall we say, a tad out of hand. Then you might remember Iraq and Afghanistan - they went well didn't they?  

The truth is that the US launches military adventures on the assumption that the world's biggest and most sophisticated Armed Forces will always prevail. But they don't. EVER! In fact if your neighbourhood copper was as incompetent as Policeman America you'd campaign to have him sacked. 

The United Nations has the capability to be the world's policeman and the independence to be so. If the United States, instead of launching its deadly and ultimately futile military adventures had supported the UN unequivocally things might have been very different in recent times. But the UN doesn't get that support and worse was treated with contempt by Bush, and not much better by Obama. Support the UN and tell the US to keep its pistols in their holsters. Now that does make sense.