The Hot Potato*

* "...which is a Yank term for any issue that might require thought and foresight to resolve,
and therefore probably can't be resolved by Yanks."  --BB, Book of Yanks.20.10-11.

On the one hand...
 

In a Declaration of Jihad dated Aug. 23, 1996, bin Laden                  publicly challenged the United States for the first time.                       He called for religious youths to kill the American                  occupiers of the kingdom. “The walls of oppression and                  humiliation,” said the fatwa, “cannot be demolished except                  in a rain of bullets.”                       In February 1998, he went further. After convening a                  meeting with various terrorist groups, including Islamic                  Jihad, he issued a fatwa calling for the deaths of all                  Americans. He did not differentiate between military and                  civilian, or between man, woman, or child.                       On Aug. 7 1998, the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and                  Kenya were bombed. A total of 226 people, including 12                  Americans, were killed. U.S. investigators blamed bin                  Laden for the attacks..                       Bin Laden has been implicated in the World Trade                   Center bombing of February 1993; the fall 1993 firefight                   in Mogadishu, Somalia, that left 18 U.S. troops dead; the                   bomb that killed five U.S. servicemen in Riyadh, Saudi                   Arabia; in 1996; and another bomb that killed 19 in their                   barracks in Dhahran.

On the other hand...
 

From now on, whenever you march off to some little foreign country to do what your generals tell you to, there will be a great wave of blame accompanying you, because you are the bad guys, and whoever you oppose must be in the right, because if they hate the nation that's going to end the world, then they must be noble and fine and good, even if they're the worst scum of the earth, because if they're scum, then it must have been some imperialistic friend of the Most Chosen Nation on Earth who made them that way. -- BB, Book of Forgers.11.1-14

And don't forget...
 

The Yanks have always liked parties, and it seemed like they had a lot to celebrate, what with... all the stocks on Wall Street going through the roof, and all the girls getting a little freer with their favors, and... music busting out all over, and Hollywood bulging with stars, and America... the richest and most prosperous nation on earth, and wasn't everything just great?  -- BB, Book of Yanks.89.1-11.

Besides...
 

...It is only here, in this Most Chosen Nation on Earth, that it is possible to tolerate petty tyrannies at a vast distance, and warmly congratulate ourselves for the loftiness of a morality which sneers at the primitive millions who seek to make war against mere despots, who rarely do anything worse than conquer and rape and torture and maim and mutilate and starve and rob and terrorize peoples so benighted that they have failed to learn the most fundamental precept of modern civilization; namely, that war is never an acceptable moral alternative, no matter what, and that no principle can ever be worth the sacrifice of a single life, especially if that single life got started in the Most Chosen Nation on Earth. -- BB, Book of Ira.26.21-27

Which meant that it was too hot a potato
for the President to handle...
 

So he left it cooking on his desk at the White House and went home. -- BB, Book of Yanks.34.13