Imperialism, or Manifest Destiny

What is the role of the United States of America on the world stage in this age?
There are those who think that we should spread democracy, there are others who believe we should liberate oppressed nations. This forum is established to facilitate discussion from a Christian perspective, so the question needs to be asked, should faith and politics be mixed?
To look specifically at Iraq as an example, I think all Christians would agree that Sadaam was wicked and needed to be punished, but moral decisions are not always sound political decisions.
My question is this: In an increasingly global world, should Christians seek to use the American government as a venue to project our ideals on the rest of the world?

I would argue no, we shouldn't project our ideals on the rest of the world. I do agree Sadaam was wicked, but we can't spread our system to other nations like that. It wouldn't work with their ideals. I hold to the Just War theory. I think we should only act militarily if we are called upon to help or if we are attacked in the first place. I'm not sure if Iraq fits in that category, unless we were called upon to help, for we followed the terrorist strikes by invading Afganistan, seeing them as the ones at fault. I think we should stick to sending out missionaries and work on cleaning our nation of the great sins we have. We are supposed to be a christian nation, so let's act our part, being a light in the world. Like in Joshua, we need to remove the sins in our camp, before continuing our fights. Democracies are only as good as their people and many times lead to monarchies. A nation needs a law that follows the commands listed in scripture. A republic is biblical, following the model established in the old testament, before the people insisted on being ruled by kings. If a nation is not willing to accept such a law, there is nothing we can do for them. How would you answer those questions?

CheeseKing wrote:Like in Joshua, we need to remove the sins in our camp, before continuing our fights.

I like that, good point.

CheeseKing wrote:I think we should only act militarily if we are called upon to help or if we are attacked in the first place. I'm not sure if Iraq fits in that category, unless we were called upon to help, for we followed the terrorist strikes by invading Afganistan, seeing them as the ones at fault.

I believe that Iraq does fit in that category, because Sadaam was harboring and supporting terrorists, and there was also the threat of the "weapons of mass destruction".

Ok. I forgot about a lot of that.

There were no WMDs, that's actually one of the great blunders of the Bush admin (even though they didn't know for sure at the time).

I intended the question to be applied externally, and internally as well. Do you think it is the role of governments, to project our ideals to the American people?
If we did, could we still call ourselves a free nation?

I have heard it said once that God judged the country with the "Civil" War because of the arrogant notion of manifest destiny maintained by our civil rulers. I have not checked it out so cannot speak yea or nae on this. Has anyone else heard this explanation?
I do think that we need to be extra cautious as a nation who we go to war with and especially why. We need to let God set the parameters for what constitutes a just war, not the whims of fallen man.