It could be that a new form of colony, the Western-administered former terrorist state, is only just over the horizon.

EXACTLY what I have been positing since the dust first began to clear from the rubble in NYC and DC.

Looks good on paper, deficient in practice. Won't fly, nice try.

This is just so much wishful thinking. Yearning for the "good old days".

It's not going to happen. Not with this president (as good as he is) and not with our allies (as fickle as they are).

The most we can hope for is this:

1. Good hard punitive actions, whenever, wherever we can, against whomever we find that is an evil-doer and vulnerable.
2. Home-front security. Preparedness on many levels. Beginning with kicking the terrorists out of the USA.

Reviving what was once commonplace and is now the unthinkable. May be time to think about it again...

Ironic.

Do you know what would really screw 'em? Isolation. Let the Moslems solve their own problems. Let's start an immediate program with the goal of indepedence from Moslem Oil. Let's start building the new style, safer Nuclear Plants. Start oil drilling in ANWAR. Get the tar sands in Alberta rolling. Why continue to send billions upon billions of dollars to these Moslem countries, whose major export would be sand, if it wasn't oil. Let them stew in their own medieval extremism.

It could be that a new form of colony, the Western-administered former terrorist state, is only just over the horizon. . . . America and its allies may find themselves, temporarily at least, not just occupying with troops but administering obdurate terrorist states. These may eventually include not only Afghanistan but Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Iran and Syria. Democratic regimes willing to abide by international law will be implanted where possible, but a Western political presence seems unavoidable in some cases.

(Vanity) The Real Enemy Isn't Osama, it's Terror in General--Here's How We Should Fight It (published three weeks ago on FR, calling for the same exact thing)

"they" don't know it yet, but they're already screwed, here's why --

after the war settles down to a dull roar and the economy picks up for six months or a year, we're in for a long, serious recession to correct the malinvestments of the last 30 years

oil demand is already soft and is going to get a lot softer over the next few years

opec will try to restrict production, but the incentives to cheat, always strong, get irresistable as prices decline

if they thought 10 bucks/bbl two years ago was bad, wait'll we're under 5 bucks, headed back to a buck, last seen in '74, and a buck today is about 25 cents in '74 dollars

meanwhile, as you said, the absolute best thing we can do is develop every alternative without subsidies and kill their market and power for decades, if not longer

and best of all, their oil price goose is permanently cooked if controlled fusion ever gets solved

This is a bad idea. Briefly,
1. Nobody wants to pay the full price of empire in money lives and trouble.
2. Rather than think of empire as a means of civilizing the world, it would be well to remember that empire and the wars of conquest it involved was a way in which barbarism made its way into Europe.
3. In Johnson's day it was common to think of anti-imperialists as oppressive and inefficent socialists and imperialists as efficient, hard working capitalists. What we are learning is that there are some similarities between imperialism and socialism as ideologies and practices. The oppresion of the inert and apolitical mass is found in both.

me too... whats so bad about colonialism?

Besides, we can soon start buying oil from Russia when that pipeline is finished. Maybe if they start doing more exploration in Siberia we can help modernize and democratize Russia and starve the arabs.

they can go back to trading camels

I figure the only way they will permanently change is if that change comes from within. Oil is allowing them to live the fantasy that they are in the modern world. They aren't. Take the oil money away and let them live at their true level. Ordinary people will not let that gone on forever.

A buck a barrel, that's one heck of a prediction.