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[Cthulhu]

But how many of the radicals we need to be world police for came about as a reaction to the US trying to be world police?

[Il Palazzo]

But how many of the radicals we need to be world police for came about as a reaction to the US trying to be world police?

I think that's what Mr.Y is trying to say.

edit:
To elaborate: What I reckon that Y argues, is that the US military is a creation of the past, tailored to be the deciding factor in the Cold War struggle against an opponent applying a similar strategy. Like a pair of twins, together with the Soviet equivalent, it grew to an unprecendented size, being the de facto focus of USA's budget spending over roughly half a century. After the fall of the Soviet Union, suddenly there wasn't any more clearly-defined enemy to justify the sustained funding of that huge military. Yet, due to the ingrained way of thinking about the world, instead of reducing the size and importance of that behemoth and refocusing the attention towards internal development and prosperity, new enemies were named to fill the void - China, Terrorism, Iraq&Iran, Extremism, Fundamentalism etc. USA appears to still be thinking in that outdated terms of Us & Them, the 'good ones' and the 'evil ones', etc. The world has changed and it's time to change with it, or suffer the same fate every other empire in history of mankind has suffered.

The point is, that there wasn't really any need for USA to become the world's policeman - it named itself one because it needed a raison d'etre for it's military machine.

[woose1]

But how many of the radicals we need to be world police for came about as a reaction to the US trying to be world police?

u wot m8

[Phmcw]

And anyway, stealth strategic bomber are useless in this case. If you want to police the world, make "cheap" expeditionary corp, adapted to guerrilla. Most of our weapons are overkill.

[SalmonGod]

I think there's also more than a misguided culturally ingrained mindset to blame.  A large portion of the economy is invested in the military.  Change that, and tons and tons and tons of people need to find normal jobs, which there already aren't enough of.  It's just like the oil industry.  The people in the oil industry are going to defend their jobs like cornered animals because it's their livelihood, even if they have to bring down the planet with them.  Capitalism makes it very difficult for large, powerful industries to go obsolete, so they continue to fester and grow like a cancer.

There was a quick round of comments among some of my co-workers yesterday expressing frustration at how needlessly over-complicated the u.s. customs beaurocracy is.  My team lead was happy to point out that if it wasn't, a lot of us would be out of jobs.  I was happy to point out that if the world made any sense, that would be a good thing.