First of all, forget the NYT article. You aren't seeing Christ in the road, you're seeing some halfwit who's telling you what his cousin told him about seeing Christ.

You'll get closer to the bone reading the document Robert linked to.

Keep in mind that this isn't a one-sided argument. I thought I'd made this point a lot more simply earlier, but I guess it takes more elaboration.

We are dealing with powers and nations that have absolutely no problems at all "shaping the international security order in line with [their own] principles and interests." China is the most obvious national example. If you were to criticize the Chinese government for shaping all their foreign and domestic affairs in their own interests, they'd look at you like you were nuts.

There are also plenty of other non-national ideologies who have had no problems visualizing themselves in control of the world. We just knocked one of them back a few years ago, and not by assuming they had as much right to be the top superpower as we do. Radical Islam has its own long-term agenda. It doesn't include a lot of tolerance for other ways of life.

This isn't a choice between the U.S. and the United Federation of Planets running the show. Nor do we live in a world where everybody will get along just swell if we all just stay home and mind our own gardens.

We don't get to live in the happy world Raoul lives in, where invading and occupying armies have never succeeded in destroying an innocent people who don't want to be occupied, where military action is always useless, and where the world has always been a quiet place where he can go into the back yard with his telescope, and always will be.

He can stand on ground that once belonged to Hitler, a few hours drive from the former Iron Curtain, and still think like this. Over 13,000 American troops are buried on Belgian soil, triple the number who have died in Iraq, and he can still think like this.

Okay, we don't want China to be on top of the heap. At least I hope we don't.

The U.N.? The United Nations is riddled by corruption, incompetence and bias. The state of their Human Rights organization is one example. This is probably the most benign of many comments on this. At last count, of all their resolutions against individual nations, three-quarters were against Israel. Most of the rest against Sudan. Apparently there are no other rights issues on the planet. Their peacekeepers are not just a joke, but maintain the worst traditions of an occupying army while not actually doing anything that an occupying army should accomplish.

Who then? The European Union? What was the last action they took that wasn't in the direct interest of the European Union? NATO? The most current NATO action--Afghanistan--is beginning to consist of most of the NATO nations sitting in the bleachers eating popcorn while the U.S. and a very few other nations carry the load.

So, assuming that pushing our own interests in world affairs is the "Neocon" manifesto, what's the "enlightened" one?

Our country won't be defeated, but from here it stands a good chance of committing suicide.