DougR, the US has no control over the other nations of the world. Either we have their cooperation, or we don't. If we piss off enough countries, we could find ourselves dealing with a lot more enemies than we have right now. And goodness knows, we need their friendship more than we need their enmity.

I don't think we make or maintain friendships with other nations by acting like we think we own them, or even that we control them. We can only accomplish what we want to do with the cooperation of all concerned.

And the attacks on 11 Sept. have shown that we do not control our enemies.