You are actually attempting to rationalize BushCo! {sheesh} Probably an exercise in futility, but:

Ponder war waged by economic means for many decades, as well as militarily. I expect next that you shall characterize US history re its neighbors (and the various smaller countries elsewhere, whom we have 'touched') - as reflecting some bizarre idea of a Meritocracy, too? - ie.

As ~with Redmond say, it's OK to become a Hegemon? - if you "earn" it via guile, cynical deception; through pandering to troglodytes/dictators -- for the sole sake of a temporary commercial advantage! (Screw the inhabitants, whose bondage your oil or other 'trade'-treaty reinforces. Screw also your own sanctimoniously self-proclaimed 'Principles'. cha cha cha)

But. When you lie with Machiavelli - you lose your "moral" suasion; then, when you hurl adolescent calumnies like Evil Empire (and object to others' similar characterization of your own self-serving policies?) of now, ~ a century? - say Manila Bay, then Hawaii, Puerto Rico, et al -

Why.. *that's* how you arrive at the obloquy it has taken this Radical ex-Trotskyite cabal to garner. 'Republicans'? 'Conservatives'? Hah: Box has them nailed close-enough; these are beyond mere local (turn-back-clock) Reactionaries - they be like some of your older Radical former-countrymen. No ice-pick this time.. yet.

In a mere 6 years - 5 years since the universal sympathies extended us, via the 9/11 attack - the US cabal has managed to reverse! that-All. (And a UK PM has committed public seppuku for his own seduction by these Liars - how's That for evidence of the trend?)

*We* are now 'The Evil Empire' to hundreds of millions; daily increasing, by all accounts. Wanna place your bets on *when* the currently accelerating drum-beat from the Neoconmen of the PNAC: commences WW-III in Iran? (though we may? still have a thin chance of saying / and Meaning-this-time: NO! If 'we' is more than a vestigial icon, at this late date, and after the sloth/sleep of many of our millions.)

Another crap-shoot, 'Iran'. Who knows the depth of ennui within collective jelloware of consumers.
(Side bet: guess the probability of a nuclear {euphemism-alert} "bunker buster" next, raising the outrage level to: Irreversible worldwide consensus. On our censure. And who knows - on what else.)

I think you've drunk the Koolaid, apparently with gusto. IMO GWBush Co. shall prove to have been as poisonous for 'America' (The Dream\ufffd) as anyone since John Wilkes Boothe (because hardly anyone will say, of Lincoln's assassination: "that was a Good thing.")

I seem to have lived through local history you've adsorbed only from comic books from the American Legion. You have No Idea what 'Americans' abided, pewling and cowering, while turning-in each other - during the McCarthy hysteria.

I may have been a kid, but I was an alert kid and I Saw That-all. I recognize that same cowering today - nascent. We'll see how abject The propaganda-orchestrated Fear becomes - real soon now, I wot.


Guess I'll see ya from the barricades (rather than 'on' the barricades.)

Oh well.