perfidy

The whole thing that Spiderman based his whole crime fighting career on was his Uncle's admonition that, "With great power comes great responsibility." The United States is in a similar quandary. Through dumb luck, hard work, clean habits, a few happy accidents of history and a bit of animal cunning, the United States has ended on top of the world in military power, economic capacity, inventiveness¹1more Nobel prizes than the next four, almost five nations. Physiology/ Medicine - more than the next 11 and ten short of more than the rest of the world combined; about one-third of all the Chemistry prizes; almost half of all Physics prizes; twice as many economics prizes as the rest of the world., and general gumption. 

What does that mean? Because we have the power to end rabid little dictatorships like that in Iraq, or North Korea, should we? Spiderman decided that yes, he does have that moral responsibility. If, like the Atlantic article describes, Saudi Arabia is as nasty a piece of work as I think it is, do we have more or less moral responsibility to deal with a problem because we helped create it? Countries like Denmark can't really effect the world the way we can. Less is therefore expected of them. But we get condemned when we fail to act (Rwanda) and when we do (Iraq.) I think we were wrong to let millions die in Central Africa. I think we are right to liberate the Iraqis, and reduce a threat to ourselves.