Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
3) Our prestige increased significantly. As a wise man said - it is better to feared than loved. Whether someone loves you is beyond your control but whether or not they fear you is within your control. Love is a fickle emotion that is unstable fear sticks like glue. Taking out Iraq in three weeks with so little casualites made the whole world realize they really don't want to get into an armed conflict with us. We had lost a lot of crediblity when we didn't enforce the Gulf War peace treaty. Now all the credibility is back.
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While I wouldn't call it "prestige," I think there is now a credible threat out there that if the president has a hard-on (figuratively speaking) for your country, s/he will cause the US military to come in and fuck around with things to make it somewhat more like s/he thinks s/he wants it, and then will flail the military around for a while and eventually will leave, after which point a new equilibrium will have to be achieved.
