perfidy

I have been very busy. I am, even now, composing a reply to your fascism thingie. However, while I'm doing that, your one sentence comment on Empire didn't answer the one question I asked for which I was most curious to hear your reply: "If we have an informal empire, a halfway state between empire and not empire, how does it work?" How are we creating, maintaining and administering this empire.? I truly don't see evidence of anything that I would describe as empire - even an informal one. Exerting influence, yes; playing politics, yes; even military action, yes - but I don't see that we are actively trying to control other countries, or peoples, on any kind of systematic basis.

Also, in regard to the expectations for the war 

No official of this government, or in the military has ever said that the war would be over in days, or that the Iraqis would surrender en masse right at the beginning. Granted, they want the war over as quickly as possible - but Bush regularly said that we should be prepared for a long, difficult fight. And for that, he was accused by the media of putting on the spin, to lower expectations. But consider, there are still only a handful of combat casualties after nearly a week of fighting. And, we are less than fifty miles from Baghdad - it took six weeks to get this far in '91. This is the fastest armored assault in military history. The only army that ever moved faster (toward the enemy) is the Mongol Hordes. And given the logistical hurdles that we have and 'Ol Genghis didn't, that's pretty remarkable. We were hoping for a coup, not counting on it. Likewise with the Turks. The plan that Gen. Franks and his staff has come up with is audacious, but not ill considered. And it is going very, very well by any historical standard. 

Do I have to bring out my republic stick again? 

Gore lost the election because we have a republic and not a direct democracy. It was decided by constitutional procedures. Rule of law is more important than democracy, and that would be the greatest gift we could give the Iraqis. Rule of law leads to civil insititutions that can support democracy, it doesn't work the other way around, as many third world nations have found to their sorrow. (And remember, Bush got a higher percentage of the vote than Clinton did both times he was elected.)