I know Neil Schulman personally. While he's been one of my favorite authors for 20 years, and has my highest respect for his intellect, he nonetheless is being completely serious -- to his detriment, I would add.
The solution to empire-on-the-cheap, which we are practicing, is to stop doing it. Period. Not to extend the direct sway of the American garrison State to more of the world.
Neil has come close to jettisoning his libertarian (and, to a large extent, anarchist) principles out of his outrage over Nine Eleven, and I can empathize, but I cannot agree with him that it's appropriate. Nor, further, can I fathom the endorsement of State power that is behind such a suggestion as this. Nor, finally, can I understand how he misses the fact of Israel already being de facto U.S. territory, in every economic and military measurement, much more so than is a Puerto Rico -- and its being a nuclear-armed loose cannon.