Power Rangers (by Josh Marshall)

[gold_bug]

POWER RANGERS
by JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL

Did the Bush Administration create a new American empire--or weaken the old one?

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?040202crat_atlarge

For leftist critics of America’s role in the world, it has long been a baleful article of faith that the United States is an agent of "neo-imperialism," exerting its power through global capital and through organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. After September 11th, a left-wing accusation became a right-wing aspiration: conservatives increasingly began to espouse a world view that was unapologetically imperialist. You could watch this happening in Washington's think tanks. Over their lunchroom tables, in their seminar rooms, on the covers of their small magazines, the idea of empire got a thorough airing--particularly among ideologues close to the policymakers planning the war on terror. At a panel discussion in the middle of 2002, I first heard "Middle East reform"--as in making the Middle East democratic and bourgeois--spoken of the way people speak of welfare reform. As the military historian Max Boot wrote in The Weekly Standard, "Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets."

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?040202crat_atlarge