I follow your posts with immense interest, since I find them to be the most sophisticated among the Web news/blog sites I usually follow, other than CounterPunch and TomDispatch. Both those Web sites are decidedly in favor of America giving up its empire, of course.

We've run into a problem recently, and that is that the Dems have shown their cards, and that is that they want to maintain a long term presence in Iraq. Let's be frank, and admit that that explains why they caved in to Bush, despite his dismal approval ratings.

You write:

Iran is a threat to our regional interests and we have regional interests that should not be given up.

I have never been someone who believes that everyone on the planet should enjoy the living standards of Americans and Europeans: that would simply destroy the planet. Thus, I accept that rich countries need to employ various stratagems to keep poor countries in check. (Especially because life in poor countries wasn't all that bad before rich countries started "developing" them. Africans were doing fine before Europe started colonizing them. At least they were in equilibrium with nature, and what more can you ask for?)

In other words, I understand that it might be in a people's self interest to engage in empire. There can be no doubt that Britain's empire benefited the British people. But the British were upfront about their empire. The Americans in contrast present their empire as a matter of freeing backward peoples.

Given that you say that you do not want us to give up our empire, I think you owe us an honest account of why we should maintain our empire. It isn't dominating other nations that bothers me so much as the mendacity of claiming that we are helping them while we are actually screwing them.

Maybe I am asking you to square the circle? Chalmers Johnson claims that a country can't be both a republic and an empire. The only way I can interpret your comment that I am responding to is that you think that it can.

"Israel is a good friend of Israel." -- Barack Obama. Is that a Freudian slip indicating that Obama suspects that Israel is not a good friend of the US?