Such totally baseless pontificating and lashing out are the symptoms of the failed “prima dona” syndrom. Go have a session with your analyst.

The Philippines chain was essential in controlling the sea lanes for vital commerce. It was an essential as a base in the Pacific. That of course is why the Japanese empire zeroed in on its conquest and later its defense at all cost. They never bothered to invade Hawaii that laid beyond the operational radius of the time with the weapons of war available at the time.

The Philippines were also an agricultural paradise that Americans quickly took over from the former Spanish masters. Enormous wealth was derived from these plantations. As Fidel Castro aptly pointed out: “Cuba and the Philippines were ripe fruits ready to fall off Spain’s colonial tree into the mouth of the Yankees.”

Do a little reseach into the insurgency that followed the US’s “liberation” of the Philippines.

Peace and health be with you too brother/sister.

It is quite easy to explain it all to a civilized nation, secular and urbane, literally decimated by the United States.

The Americans are barbarians, like the Mongols, and will soon pass.

Besides destruction what do they have to offer except force and death, and killing civilians, even women and children at a distance, because they are so few in number, and so fearful of death, that they cannot afford killed in action and casualties.

Or are you so unacquainted with history not to realize that much technology, even as with the Mongols, is often invented or mastered in new ways by barbarians.

Unlike the Mongols, however, the American troops, in the way they fight, have also proved themselves cowards.

And what imperium do you know that is run by cowards, except over other cowards?

That explanation, which is partial, will have to do for the nonce.

Go back to your misreading, your pretended moral outrage, and your jumping to easy ideological conclusions.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are occupied territories. Their monarchies were created as mere facades for western oil companies. They are the Herods of the Roman empire.

It may or may not ever dawn on Gore to thank his lucky stars that he was not elected president.

After all, not only has he got a Nobel Prize, but he was not assassinated in office.

Imagine the war in the Near East that would have ensued.

I must admit I had to look that one up to maek sure it was legit. That is, as another reader said, utterly vile. Before the US came along, the most powerful nation always had an emperor/king/fuhrer…so what? Many of our ancestors came here to get away from all the squabbling and poverty and oppression of Europe. Liberty is the highest ideal, and a nation that can provide that to its citizens is ‘the point’ that Kristol seems unable to grasp. Searching for monsters to slay abroad should hold no appeal to Americans truly interested in liberty or prosperity.

Peace be with you.

I am not sure that your analysis is entirely accurate. Indeed, in Iraq as well as Afghanistan (in both of our misadventures there), it is safe to say that net/net, we are spending far more than we are taking in.

With respect to the Philipines, please tell me again what great natural resource are we getting from that chain of tropical islands?

The fact that the USSR was forced to subsidize its ‘less fortunate’ client states (weren’t they all less fortunate?) points to the abject failure that was Communism. Contrary to your implication, I would choose private ‘business’ over collectivist ‘principle and ideology’ everytime.

None of this is in any way meant to justify the inherent evils of imperialism. Nations and their peoples should certainly be allowed self-determination. Even though we would love to see contitutional republics the world over, citizens must come to that conclusion on their own and not at the open end of gun. We certainly can not and should not force that ideal upon them.

Peace be with you.

How much of this territory was in fact purchased, like Louisiana and Alaska? Or entered the United States as the secession of entities, like California or Texas, from another sham “empire” to the South, Mexico?

These states and territories are indeed the true provinces of the Federal Imperialists, who tax them as subjects, draft and otherwise raise armies among them, impose and arbitrate their law, and now claim also the right to prohibit their secession from a “Union” that is forced and often tyrannical.

What then of the supposed “imperium” abroad?

That supposed “empire” abroad is mostly the myth and play-acting of the same national elite.

Far from being provinciae in the ancient Roman sense, these areas outside United States territory proper, instead of being dominated and taxed, drain the blood and treasure of the domestic subjects, so that a Clinton or a Bush, a Roosevelt or a Wilson, can act out the sham of being world “imperialists”, which role they play as incompetently as they manage the financial and economic affairs of the genuine empire at home.

Despite having putatively the most advanced military technology in the world, what did the supposed American imperial armies accomplish in Korea and Vietnam, and what are they accomplishing in Iraq and Afghanistan, save the killing of vast numbers of foreign civilians and the bankruptcy of the empire’s subjects at home?

Looked at in the cold light of a short winter day, is the United States really a serious military power on the world stage?

Only if military might means destruction without conquest.

The myth of American empire abroad is rooted in World War I, which the intervention of the United States supposedly won single-handedly.

That myth is itself ungrounded in fact, but even were it true, what did the United States gain by the supposed victory save another worse and more expensive war in World War II?

Did United States win that war single-handedly as well? That again is the myth enshrined among the domestic subjects, but in fact that war was won in Europe in alliance with another very similar “empire”, the Soviet Union.

Did the United States in the Far East singlehandedly defeat Imperial Japan and win the war in the Pacific? Again that is the myth, but there too this was a partnership with another empty and decrepit empire, China, which, as any objective student of military history will tell you, did the real damage to the Japanese Army, despite horrendous losses of its own.

On the basis of two such fragile and close victories, the national elite claimed world power, and the myth was swallowed hook, line and sinker by the real imperial subjects, Americans at home.

Do the imperial play actors now have clientela around the world?

Indeed, they seem to, but clients who are well paid to accord the Federal elite every trapping of imperialists without any of the substance.

Worse, at least one client, Israel, considers the status of ally mainly an instrument to bleed the real empire and its people, the United States proper, of its men and money and in the interests of its own foreign policy in the Middle East.

And another ally, Egypt, is only too happy to play the same game, getting almost as much treasure as the Israelis.

But we are still not at the bottom of the barrel.

What was the first Gulf War but the renting out of the Federal Empire’s troops and military might to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, again supposed imperial clients, but in the end tails wagging the straw dog of the American sham imperium–in part no doubt so that someone like Bill Buckley can act the part of British Victorian deciding fates in the Philippines.

The old Soviet Empire, having come to final grief in Afghanistan, had at least a small, clear-headed elite of Russian patriots who realized the emptiness and cost of empty empire.

Given the chance to get off their end of the seesaw, they took it, and, after some initial difficulty, prosper.

In the process, they left the expensive and disastrous title, “the world’s only remaining Superpower” to the morons of the American Federal elite, and their gulled, overworked, increasingly impoverished and diseased imperial subjects at home.