dear dvlenk6
This post on the bryce forum have many political issues so is difficult to do not talk about politics ;)
Now **I'm trying to explain my real point of view about "imperialism":
**For first I'm pacific but not a pacifist.
I think that there are wars that you must combat, but not every war must be fight.
In the "iraq case" there was no weapos of mass destruction, Saddam was not a friend of Bin Laden (he was his enemy) and yes, Saddam was a bloody dictator but the world is full of bloody dictators but USA do not start a war with every dictators on the earth... (some of them are friends of USA).
So the only reason to take down Saddam was to control a strategic piece of land on the earth because the oil and natural gas in this area.
Perhaps this war was just crucial piece of a complex puzzle for the expansionist USA politic, expansionism dictate only to mantain the same level of consumes inside USA (mantaining the power of the country by this administration).
I understand and perhaps agree with this "imperialist" USA politic (if I was a Noth American).
"Imperialist" is not a real insult, is just a "state of things", it is just "realpolitik"...
If USA economy is OK also Europe economy will be OK (until the end of resouces).
But sincerly I prefer the good old English Commonwealth colonialist and imperialist way, with no frills with no false good will but just honest.
But at least the good old Englishmen take all the resposability of the colony managing it directly as it was the homeland.
Nowdays the neo-colonialims is just aimed to take milk from the cow until its dead.
In this process thousands of poor people find the dead because the war or because famine.
USA had promised a lot of money to help Iraq people. Since today this "help" go only to pay the reconstiction of the oil pumps and the arming of the Iraq armed force (just to use it as meat for guns).