WSJ: Classic Imperialism - Throughout the world, our military wins friends and influences people.

This past summer, I observed a U.S. Army Special Forces exercise in Africa that represented the quintessence of imperialism as it has been practiced throughout history and yet which no modern liberal could oppose. Almost 200 Green Berets fanned out across the Sahara to train with soldiers from nine North and West African countries. It was part of a broad effort to professionalize the troops of fledgling democracies, assist them in hunting down Islamic terrorists in unruly borderlands, and deal with future humanitarian catastrophes like Darfur....

For a relatively small outlay in men and expenditures, the U.S. military has begun developing a badly needed, pan-African intervention force....

Such small-scale, bare-bones missions are far more indicative of how the U.S. military actually operates across the world than is the fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. Without the experience of such missions, many of which are humanitarian, troops in New Orleans would not be able to perform as expertly....

Who could possibly be against such classic imperialism, provided, of course, that the term itself is not used?... For in the overwhelming majority of cases, U.S. troops are acting upon requests from struggling democratic governments to take in hand their armed forces, so that their soldiers will defend democracy, not subvert it. This was particularly true in Eastern Europe following the collapse....

Moreover, given that humanitarian disasters increasingly occur in anarchic zones, the militarization of relief aid is not a trend to disparage.... The situation is similar in many African countries, where civilian relief agencies often operate only in the vicinity of the capital cities for their own safety, leaving the rest of the countryside for militaries to handle....

It does not help public awareness that the media gives almost no coverage to the activities of the American military beyond a few obvious places....

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God-Fearing Spartans
Opinion Journal ^ | 9/22/05 | DANIEL FORD

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1489899/posts

God-Fearing Spartans A look at America's "imperial grunts."

"Forget the crap about it ain't being a culture war," says an American sergeant in Zamboanga, trying to explain why he regards the local Muslims as hostile. In "Imperial Grunts," Robert Kaplan surveys the U.S. military presence around the world. He finds brighter spots than this southern Philippine island but never a more succinct statement of the problem: In "Injun country," as the sergeant notes, you can't afford to be nonjudgmental.

It is Mr. Kaplan's conceit that the U.S. now governs the world and, for efficiency, has carved it into six territories or "commands." For good measure, we have a Special Operations Command to perform unconventional tasks anywhere, though they are required much more in the Middle East or South America than in, say, "Northcom," an area comprising the continental U.S., Canada, Alaska, the Caribbean--and the west coast of Greenland.

Mr. Kaplan set out to visit a hotspot in each command. His grand tour occupied him for two years, during which time he developed an abiding fondness for the men who guard the marches of the American imperium. "I was beginning to love these guys," he writes of a special-forces team in Colombia. "They had amassed so much technical knowledge about so many things at such a young age. They could perform minor surgery on the spot. Yet they had such a reduced sense of self compared to everyone I knew in the media
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