Reply #3: the US has waged continual aggressive low-grade conflicts since WWII

[wli]

There is little in history that is even remotely analogous. People are still trying to characterize it, with "neocolonialism" and other neologisms to try to capture its essence. What it amounts to is the state as an organized crime syndicate or armed robber or similar carrying out analogous actions of extortion or robbery against other states under the auspices of the IMF and similar. There are other complex aspects that break the analogy. It's a new and unique phenomenon, which is why it's so difficult to grasp.

We can't quite cop out and say it's "like the Roman Empire" or "like Nazi Germany" because it's fundamentally different from both. But it's no less evil and no less oppressive.

In fact, many of the excesses we complain about are actually tactical errors on their part. The offshoring and corporatist economic management, war crime -related atrocities, and so on actually serve to expose them, and even undermine their own agenda. They could have even more insidiously maintained an overall image of integrity and altruism on behalf of the American people while continuing the despotic domination of Third World countries and furthering global economic injustice.

We're waking up to something far worse and far larger than Bush as a grossly incompetent Hitler wannabe gang-sodomizing little boys in front of their mothers and chainsawing little girls into pieces in Iraq. We're discovering that all our "prosperity" and our prominence in geopolitics is founded on state criminality of a degree not witnessed in national leadership since the autogenocide by torture of 16th century Wallachia. We're discovering that this has been continuous across numerous ostensibly differing regimes for at least 50 years, and that we've even directly sponsored and profited from all of the most murderous and horrific regimes in the latter part of the 20th century. And we're discovering that the basis of not only our prominence and prosperity, but our very dignity is all crimes and lies.