America's Bid For Global Dominance

[Capt Dizle]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
What did the article say anyway? I haven't read it.

Lies, damn lies and leftist propaganda. Nothing to it at all.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Compare this to the British Empire, where everyone seemed to glory in Empire.

That's not entirely correct. In the 19th century the British Empire went through periods of popular resistance to expansion which were repeatedly quashed by one disaster or another. The East India Comapny managed to ward off pressure to officially incorporate India under the Queen's rule until the bloody aftermath of the Sepoy mutiny (the brutality of the military response) fed a ground swell to make India an empire within an empire. The British resisted official colonial involvement in Egypt and the Sudan. During the Mahdiist uprising Gordon went to Khartoum as a mercenary for the Egyptian government, not as a representative of Great Britain. His death triggered a popular reaction that forced the British to intervene in north Africa. Likewise the British initially had little enthusiasm for formal colonization of Africa until the mad rush for colonies in Africa by Belgium, France and Germany made the temptation too great.

[Unspeakable Horror]

...just wage a total war... our children will sing great songs about us years from now...

Sounds Klingon...

[Sava]

Originally posted by jimmytrick Lies, damn lies and leftist propaganda. Nothing to it at all.

Did Fez change his name again?

[ranskaldan]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
For all of the leftist conspiracy lets see what Bush has already done in terms of agressive actions:

- Toppled the Taliban and replaced it with Karzai. We had a just causus belli in this case, the Taliban was harboring Bin Laden

- Threatened Iraq. This however has only be done through getting international support and working through the United Nations.

Wake me when we are actually spreading our flag around the world a la Britain.

That age is over. No nation, not even America, can plant their flag around the world and expect to get away with it.

America is the closest thing to the Roman Empire or Abbasid Caliphate that the modern, nuclear, globalized world can offer. With a network of allies around the world - it can pretty much do anything, through any means, short of visibly and utterly taking power.

As for whether that's a good thing or not, let's call it the Pax Americana.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Some people like to pretend we're better than all that. Empire, up until very recently, was a very dirty word here.

The US has been de facto the dominant power on earth since the end of WWII. It took until 2002 for someone to write an article about that?

And empire still is a dirty word - so much baggage and inefficiency. We just need a new word to package the concept, that's all.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
And empire still is a dirty word - so much baggage and inefficiency. We just need a new word to package the concept, that's all.

Hegemony.

Heck, we lefites have been writing articles like this for a long time. This is one of the first more "mainstream" magazines to broach the issue.

[Sava]

The Afghan campaign is a major failure Shi, I don't know why you think the Taliban is out of the picture (oh yeah, cuz the American media is telling you so ). Sure, Karzai is the current US-puppet leadership, but the Taliban is far from gone in Afghanistan.

This Iraq situation is going to turn out bad if there is war... Saddam will destroy the Iraqi oil fields and create an environmental disaster 10 times worse than the Kuwati oil fires. And if he's truly backed into a corner, Saddam will launch everything he has at anything that moves (including his own people). Personally, I don't think he's that important to risk the destruction of that oil or the lives of millions of Iraqi's. But you, like most other conservative Americans, wouldn't mind killing a million Iraqi's to save 10 cents on a gallon of gas .

[Shi Huangdi]

"The Afghan campaign is a major failure Shi, I don't know why you think the Taliban is out of the picture (oh yeah, cuz the American media is telling you so ). Sure, Karzai is the current US-puppet leadership, but the Taliban is far from gone in Afghanistan."

Apparently according to Sava, a teenager throwing a grenade at a coalition vehicle equals Taliban control. I never said the Taliban was completely out of the picture, I said they are out of power- which they are. Their might still still be a few guerillas left somewhere, but they are out of power. Not to say Afghanistan doesn't still have some problems left with it, certainly influence of the warlords is a big problem. But at least the warlord are all anti Al-Qaeda, and we have got rid of the Al-Qaeda training camps. OBL used to be able to operate out in the open, now he is on the run. The military campaign agaisnt Afghanistan was a sucsess.

[Agathon]

I'm really surprised at the replies to this thread. If such a question had been posed three years ago not many people would have agreed that the US was fast on the way to becoming a global tyranny. I suppose it shows how poorly the Bush Administration has managed its PR.

Who would have thought that opinions similar to those of Noam Chomsky would find their way into the everyday media? -And I'm not just talking about the Pilger article - I'm talking about the mainstream press in almost every country but the United States.

I suppose you have to laugh when the Republican right ends up spreading the word better than the left ever did.

[Sava]

They're not in power, but by no means has Bush had any success. If anything, he simply scattered a collection of Al Qaida making them harder to find.

[Shi Huangdi]

Originally posted by Sava
They're not in power, but by no means has Bush had any success. If anything, he simply scattered a collection of Al Qaida making them harder to find.

At least we can go after them now. They may not have been in hiding before, but that's because they were being protected by Taliban forces. We have captured a good deal of Al Qaeda members since then with the help of our Pakistani friends, and we have made their job more difficult by making it harder for them to operate in the open.

We got the Taliban out of power, shut down the terrorist training camps, and got rid of the only country in the world that was openly harboring terrrorists. And we did it with a lot less bloodshed and struggle that some anticipated. That's a sucsess.

[chequita guevara]

I think you're both right, but you're only focusing on aspects. Al-Qaeda is as big a threat today as it was a year and a half ago. Their safe haven, however, is gone. Their allies have a much harder time aiding them.

On the other hand, we aren't as focused as we should be, as the Bushies are salivating over taking out Hussein. Our propaganda in the Moslem world is laughed at, our allies are uncomfortable with how things are going, and their people are downright hostile to us. According to some reports, al-Qaeda has reopened some of their Afgani camps, and this attack shows they and their ilk are growing bolder.

Bush may have played right into bin Laden's hands by using the attacks as an opportunity to solidify American hegemony, rather than keeping his eyes on the criminals who hit us. For now, only history will tell.

[Shi Huangdi]

As I said before Che, preventing Saddam from having nuclear weapons is critical to the war on terrorism. In order to be able to fight the WOT in the years ahead, we need hegemony over the midddle east. We need to be able to react to any crisises that go on there decisively, and we need to be able to pressure the governments there to cooperate with us in the war on terrorism if that is nessecary. Were Saddam ot have nuclear weapons, it would severely dimish our power there and it would diminish our ability to influence Middle Eastern countries.

[chequita guevara]

As the article suggests, this has nothing to do with why we're going after Iraq. They had planned to go after Iraq should the opportunity arise before 9/11. It's just an excuse.

In any event, Iraq is too weak now to project power beyond its borders (heck, even within its borders). They have no capacity to interfere with the US, and even if they had a bomb, they wouldn't be able to interfere with us.