Don't draw that map yet of the new American Empire

Boston Globe ^ | 6/21/2003 | Georgie Anne Geyer

[RJCogburn]

DO YOU SUDDENLY feel part of an ''empire''? Are you moved to march on Mexico and build aqueducts in Honduras? In the dark of night, when the town is still, do you sometimes slip away into the basement and surreptitiously try on the uniforms of Caesar and Hannibal and Napoleon?

[Alas Babylon!]

Idiot! (not you, RJ). This guy doesn't even realize we DON'T have an Empire precisely because Dubya DOESN'T want one. In case he's totally forgotten about 9-11, we're fighting terrorists and their supporters who killed 3,000 Americans on that day. When they're all dead we can come home. The President said from the very beginning that this would be deadly, dangerous work that would take a long time. Can anyone say we should have done less? Would a pacifist approach to 9-11 led to peace or just more attacks?

[BushCountry]

This tired liberal claptrap about empire building is getting old. I honestly have to believe that their plight as a second class political party has drove them insane. I knew the commie libs were, but now I think it is going mainstream. I almost feel sorry for them.

[PeterPrinciple]

When do the lies stop?

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

If America could decide on Empire and get on with it, I'd be more optimistic about the future.

If we just sit here, pretending, we will be overrun from without and betrayed from within.

We could take the world without breaking a sweat, but I believe we will just lie down and die a wimpering death under the feet of invading hordes.

[IronJack]

Well, Georgie, do you seriously think the progress of destiny needs your paltry consent? The fact is, America IS an empire in every sense of the word except the pejorative. And contrary to the traditional model of empire, we did not attain that status through conquest, but through moral superiority and fortuitous timing. We can debate HOW we got there all you'd like. But not THAT we're there.

[tet68]

Georgie doesn't have a problem with "empire" as long as
it's run by democrats, just look at her statements.

"All this empire stuff on the part of the illuminati of this administration is serious in getting people killed, but barely serious in any planning for the long run. It is heedless, random expansionism without any base. "

Random expansion,( not under central party control.)

"but democracy is a vehicle for resolving disputes. It is not an ideology like communism or Islamic fundamentalism, and therefore will not likely take their place easily"

Where did she go to school?

"I must confess that I am uncomfortable with this idea of an American Empire. We have already seen that our ability to change the economics and culture of other countries is very limited."

You got to love dims, one minute the are ranting about how
"American Culture" has infected pure native cultures and the next mewling about how we have no influence.

Geyer probably thinks Streisand can sing too.




, the questioners are coming out of the woodwork all over Washington

[tet68]

Oh, thats right.

"The questioners are coming out of the woodwork......"

We know what kind of vermin live in the woodwork and what
a infestation they are.

Demoroachs. Turn on the light of truth and they all scurry
to hide in the woodwork of politics.

[alloysteel]

If America rules over an empire, surely it is one of the loosest and most anomalous ever in history. True, US military forces have occupied other nations' territories, and based our garrisons there. But eventually, we withdraw, if no strategic advantage for that forward base can be determined, and we have withdrawn before because of the expressed intent of the local populace, and no perceived danger in doing so. We have been driven out of positions of military superiority, but that is more a lack of will on our part, than of any achievement of equivalency by the opponent.

But the US has accepted the assigned guardianship of derelict and broken territories only reluctantly, and use every effort to restore these regions to some semblance of self-government. If these regions have valuable resources, we seek to find and develop these resources so that the productive output can be used to support the resident people in that district. We market these resources for them, until a world market is developed, and we purchase their product at established world prices. Other empires in history have used the colonial regions only for their own selfish purposes, using their product as a means to garner ever greater wealth for the central capital, while distributing few or no proceeds from the exploitation of these resources back to the hinterlands.

Is this, really, what you think that Americans do? The Romans did, the French did, the Ottomans did, the Chinese did, Japan did, Russia and later the Soviet Union did, but do you not see the difference in how the US has approached the whole concept of empire, and how they carried out their responsibilities to the colonial outposts, eventually allowing the colonies to leave the empire?

[Valin]

When do the lies stop?

As soon as a certain EX frist lady and junior senator from NY. gets back in the WH.

[Valin]

This guy

Georgie Anne Geyer is a woman..at least rumor has it.
As to weather this is true or not...I really REALLY don't want to know.

[redhead]

Does this doofus even know what he's talking about? I couldn't make heads nor tails of that waste of bandwidth.

[Justin Raimondo]

The Progress of Destiny? Hmmmmmm...... Talk about hubris! Don't forget, Iron, that we are all rust in the end. Yes, even the American Empire.

[junta]

Ms Geyer is off by a bit there is no plan for empire because there never is a real plan for anything. When someone tries to pass off on the rubes something called a "plan" it is really a way to destroy and plunder what he/she does not currently posses. All the isms that have been passed off and all empires dreamed of have been workings of people on the make from King Leopold to King Perle same motive same results.

[Backwoods Southern Lawyer]

Just a minute before you label Georgie Ann Geyer as a knee-jerk liberal; she ain't. Check out the links at the bottom of this post. It does concern me that she is at odds with GWB over the handling of Iraq. It is possible that she is right, at least in part.

http://www.americanpatrol.org/INS/bachgeyer071599.html

http://www.uexpress.com/georgieannegeyer/?uc_full_date=20030501

http://www.uexpress.com/georgieannegeyer/?uc_full_date=20030114

http://www.uexpress.com/georgieannegeyer/?uc_full_date=19990804

http://www.uexpress.com/georgieannegeyer/?uc_full_date=19990820

[IronJack]

Don't forget, Iron, that we are all rust in the end. Yes, even the American Empire.

Ah, but what a keen edge we carry before we succumb. And the sun hasn't even risen yet on the American Empire.

[IronJack]

A socialist empire is a dream devoutly to be wished. Socialism transcends nationalism and borders. It is a union of spirit that reaches its hands around the world.

And Barbra Streisand is a wise elder statesman.