Rogue cop

Canada's own Ian Welsh writes great sense at Firedoglake.

. . . I have to tell you, that from a foreigner's point of view. . . you are a rogue nation. You invade people based on lies. You have no credibility on Iran. You are the boy who cried Wolf. You don't obey the Geneva conventions. You have secret prisons. You torture people, including the citizens of your allies. You have abolished habeas corpus for classes of people. You kidnap foreigners and secretly ship them off to be tortured. . . . There are only two nations in the world who constantly talk about how they're willing to nuke people without even being attacked first: The North Koreans - and the UNITED STATES.
You gave up the ability to stop countries like Iran from getting nukes when you invaded a country like Iraq which had no nukes and no real possibility of getting them. That was your wad, and you blew it. You chose to be weak. At this point, for you to stop Iran would involve you in a war you cannot win -- or at least no victory worth having. You can't occupy Iran, so are you going to really glass Tehran or the entire country? Do you know what the world reaction would be? Do you know what would happen to the dollar? Are you out of your minds?
Why is this even being discussed? And why is it that I can't simply dismiss it as diplomatic posturing? When did the US step through the looking glass? When did insanity become reasonable?

Exactly.
I keep hearing American talking head pundits discuss war with Iran as though it was some kind of obligation -- like, America is the global cop, the global superpower telling other countries what to do, its some kind of divine right or mandate or something.
I want to say this to these talking heads -- America used to have four things: a magnificent Constitution, the sympathy of the world following 9/11, a large economy, and a large military budget. All that is left is a large American economy -- as long as oil is still purchased in American dollars and China is still purchasing debt -- and all that military spending.
But America has no monopoly on morality. Not any more. And no more right to tell everyone else how to live than Brazil does -- in fact, at least Brazil still knows how to have fun.