For years now Admiral Scott and others like him have been telling us that the U.S. can't keep playing the role of world policeman.

America as world policeman: "Who the hell else do you want to lead the world - China, Japan, Germany?

"It steers the middle course between an isolationist, unilateralist course, on the one hand, and world policeman, highly interventionist role, on the other."

Ah America, self-appointed world policemen causing a fuss wherever they go.

Not as world policemen.

The US' international trade will suffer and without a world policeman there will be misery around the globe.

He has now decided he wants to act as a world policeman, and help the Libyan rebels before Benghazi is flattened.

So the role of world policeman cannot be reserved exclusively to the Americans.

But by 1941 a phrase like "world policeman" was already creeping into the Presidential language.

American "pragmatists" warn that democratic idealism will make us the world policeman.