On Empire

I am a reader of several online info sources, as I do not trust having a single media source. I think any thinking person does this in an effort to try and get at the roots of any issue. This is especially true of world events.

There is an interesting article at the Asia Times Online (AToL) today, concerning some of the legacies of the Bush administration. One concept in particular really stuck out to me, and that was this one: America is not building an empire.

This is interesting, because many of the Bush administration's critics here at home level the "empire building" accusation ad nauseum. But the commentator at AToL describes empire-building as a planned enterprise with a vision of how the world should be managed. Which it really seems the Bush administration is not doing, and the US suffers because of it.

We throw the idea of an empire around like it's a wholly bad thing. Does it have to be? Saying we will not become an empire sort of sound like a small business saying it will never become a corporation.

Are we not an empire now?