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I would agree. While I think Shrub and company's basic plan is based on rational objectives, the overall purpose is clearly based on a spiritually bankrupt philosophy of greed and domination.

"spiritually bankrupt philosophy of greed and domination"

Well said.

This philosophy has been around a long time. As Doran mentioned earlier, it dates back at least to colonialism and "Manifest Destiny," and even before, I would say as far back as the Roman Empire, which never really fell, it just morphed.

It's time for this philosophy to be thrown into the funeral pyre of old dead ideas. This is, after all, the new millennium. It's time for a change. Of course, they don't want change and fear it because they are so deeply vested in the old. They've build their Empire on it. Too bad.

They're going down and they know it. They're just desparate to grab as much lucre before they jump ship. Hence all the coroporate corruption, hence Enron and Halliburton and all the war profiteering. The danger to us, as people, is to not be dragged down with the sinking ship, but to break free of the chains that bind us to their domination.

The recently published work "Empire" (I forgot the names of the two authors) has some insightful neo-Marxist commentary on the current global conflict as they see it. The authors' claim that the activities of elite interests are actually not determined by those interests themselves but rather as a reaction to what the opposition is doing. The basic idea is that the elites, gobbling up the lion's share of the pie, are perfectly satisfied with the status quo until it is threatened. I sometimes wonder if Shrub and company have read the tea leaves and don't like what they see--hence the current Middle Eastern wars and the global war on "terror."

The 2 authors are Hardt and Negri. They've recently come out with a related work called "Multitude" that discusses war and democracy.

"The basic idea is that the elites, gobbling up the lion's share of the pie, are perfectly satisfied with the status quo until it is threatened. I sometimes wonder if Shrub and company have read the tea leaves and don't like what they see--hence the current Middle Eastern wars and the global war on "terror."

Yes, I believe this is exactly what is happening. The futurist, Alvin Toffler, you may remember him as the author of "Future Shock." His second best seller, "The Third Wave," published in the early 80's, sent shock waves throughout the corporate world, warning that unless they learn to adapt to the "Third Wave," i.e., the revolution in technology, they are dying dinosaurs. They made a desparate attempt in the dotcom era, and failed miserably. They know they can't adapt, they see the handwriting on the wall.

I've heard quite a lot about "Empire." I'd like to read it, when I find the time.

Here are some snippets from Toffler:

"Why is it that all our institutions seem to be going through a simultaneous crisis? Why is it that the health system's in crisis, the justice system's in crisis, the education system's in crisis, the value system's in crisis -- you name it -- why? There must be something that cuts across all of these. ... And why is it happening in Tokyo and London and Italy and so forth? Why is there a political crisis throughout all the political countries? The answer is that we have sets of institutions that were designed either for agrarian life ... as parliaments were, or ... the Industrial Age, but no longer meet the requirements of today. And the problem used to be -- it took what? Three months for a message to get from Ohio to Washington? And vice versa? And the idea was the Senate would be a chamber for leisurely deliberation for the major issues. Well, come on! Nobody has two minutes of uninterrupted time. So the external conditions are radically changed. So the question is how flexible are the existing institutions themselves. We're fortunate, the Americans are lucky, because our system is generally more flexible and certainly more decentralized than the other industrial states. Which gives us a better shot. But I don't believe that the system can continue in its present form." - Alvin Toffler

Wave theory

The central premise of Toffler's talk was that human history, while it is complex and contradictory, can be seen to fit patterns. The pattern he has been seeing in his career takes the shape of three great advances or waves. The first wave of transformation began when some prescient person about 10,000 years ago, probably a woman, planted a seed and nurtured its growth. The age of agriculture began, and its significance was that people moved away from nomadic wandering and hunting and began to cluster into villages and develop culture.

The second wave was an expression of machine muscle, the Industrial Revolution that began in the 18th century and gathered steam after America's Civil War. People began to leave the peasant culture of farming to come to work in city factories. It culminated in the Second World War, a clash of smokestack juggernauts, and the explosion of the atomic bombs over Japan.
Just as the machine seemed at its most invincible, however, we began to receive intimations of a gathering third wave, based not on muscle but on mind. It is what we variously call the information or the knowledge age, and while it is powerfully driven by information technology, it has co-drivers as well, among them social demands worldwide for greater freedom and individuation.

It might be better to pass up Empire unless you have a lot of time on your hands (and a Ph.D. in political science). The book ranks right up there with Heideggar's Sein und Seit as being almost incomprehensible. The authors have a much better written work called Multitude that just came out. They include the Iraqi War in their analysis.

One question....Where are the colonies of the American Empire?...I keep seeing phrases like "the Hegemony of the US" and "the Domination of the world (by the US)" bandied about by the left...but I just can't seem to find any of those subjegated colonies on any of my maps of the US.

Is your argument here that all empires call their colonies "colonies"? By your logic, all the countries taken over by Japan weren't colonies but were simply part of Japan's "co-prosperity sphere." Do you also imply that all states enjoy the same freedom from foreign interference (via primarily the U.S.) and domination?