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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (92293)	12/26/2004 7:22:35 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793928

I wrote to Barnett a few times and he wrote back I have had several Email exchanges with him also. He responds to too many emails, I think. He will have to cut down next month when he starts writing his next book. I think it's just a quibble over terminology to deny that America is an empire, I don't define what we have as an "empire." No colonies, which is the major part of the definition, IMO. But it's not worth arguing over. We export freedom, and we do it with the connectivity of our ideas.

To: Ilaine who wrote (92293)	12/26/2004 8:18:17 AM
From: Sig	Respond to of 793928

... think it's just a quibble over terminology to deny that America is an empire, and I think we're wasting time that we could be spending more fruitfully on thinking about how to use our power wisely. But you knew that.>>>>> BY one definition, as a ruler of a group of states or territories, we are just one empire among many. The difference is that we do not have one ruler, but a sequence of elected rulers, and many parts of the world economies have expanded to become beyond singular control. Americas success is believed to be the result of free trade and sharing of wealth among common citizens,something that did not happen under Saddam and probably does not happen enough in Saudi Arabia or N Korea. Russias empire collapsed, Chinas empire is growing fast. Did we use our power wisely after 911? We could have concentrated on building internal defences which would become obsolete and only partially effective, while terrorists ripped apart the world economy and our own by shooting down airliners or sinking boats as soon as they left protected spaces. Is their anyone left who thinks that we could have negotiated with OBL and cured the terrorist problem without going after the source, in the ME? We and the UN "negotiated" with Saddam for 12 years to no avail. Still an empire, but forget the evil part- thats only an adjective used by those who hate us. Sig