Josh Marshall makes a great point about the neo-conservative attitude toward projecting American power:

In the course of our normal lives, few of us have much difficulty identifying habits of defensiveness or a penchant for histrionic or petulant interactions as signs of weakness, not strength. Really powerful people don't need stunts and usually signal their power by a certain graciousness and indifference in such interactions. They have nothing to prove. But American power, respect, command of public opinion -- however you want to define it -- must be in these people's minds an extremely brittle thing. They really do seem like extremely insecure people.