U.S. a force for good ...

The majority of Americans believe the United States has a moral obligation to be engaged on the international stage.

So says a new survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc. for Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and the United Nations Foundation.

Results from the September 2008 survey were recently released and found that nearly a quarter of Americans (24 percent) say the United States should be very actively engaged in world affairs and 70 percent believe America should be at least moderately involved.

Most believe the nation should be actively involved in world affairs because of an explicit responsibility or moral obligation to take a leadership role in the world.

At the same time, 79 percent of Americans agree that sometimes U.S.  involvement in world affairs causes more harm than good.

Allen Hertzke is a University of Oklahoma professor who is now a visiting scholar at the Pew Forum on Religion and  Public Life. I’ve spoken to professor Hertzke several times for various stories.

Here’s what he had to say about the study:

“Americans remain very interventionist in their views about America’s role in the world and want the U.S. to take an activist role on the world stage, but they want us to be smart about it,” Hertzke said.