Faux-Toughness

Yglesias writes about the recent misuse of our real power HERE, including a quote from some other dude:

It turns out, rather, that neither the Poles nor the Israelis care overmuch about the other; rhetorical support for the neocon vision of liberty/missile defense/bunker busting/awesomeness/sexy/democracy/whiskey collapses in the face of real world material interest. In the end, it’s almost as if our allies value material and institutional commitments to their defense more than they value a nebulous American reputation for “toughness”.

I've bitched and moaned countless times here re: the stupidity of treating foreign policy as if you're a jv football team at your opponent's Burger King. The rest of the world doesn't sit around going "wow, America's tough!", they think "wow, that seems like a waste of time." Of course this is even more glaring when the cowboys/indians crowd is immediately followed by adults who take their jobs seriously.