Longing for the Roman way?

As amply documented here on The Portal, neocons are howling for more military intervention abroad. They are the same learned gentry who formed the Amen Choir for our ill-fated invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Andrew Sullivan notes:

"What's striking to me is how many American conservatives actually long for the exercise of brute force or constant executive action in the face of a dramatically changing world. This they call strength - even after the debacles of Bush's executive whims. They see the role of an American president as mastering the world, controlling events, forcing everything through the prism of post-war American hegemony. But that hegemony is over, partly because of America's success in defeating the Soviets and China's and India's successes in forging a new economic order. The kind of hegemony Nixon or Reagan enjoyed was an accident of history. It will not be regained, by the laws of economics, and demography."

Panic is another factor driving calls for military action by conservatives. 9/11 scared the bejesus out of them. It turned the once pragmatic Dick Cheney into a de facto Darth Vader. For these folks, it is better to control events (at any cost) than have events control you. But such a stratagem would necessitate replicating the perpetual aggression of the post-Republican Roman Empire. Though the notion is absurd, this approach would sit just fine with some neocons.

Fortunately, President Obama is under no delusions about American hegemony and appears to be paying heed to a prescient passage in Homer’s Iliad: "Wise to resolve, and patient to perform."