> "This is not Vietnam or Somalia or those places where you can walk away,"
I've been arguing specifically this last point for quite awhile. The u.s. empire has two ground points, the Mideast & Latin America. To surrender either is to get off the tiger it is riding. (Image from Pericles.) And whatever errors they made, and however they differed among themselves, the great marxist analysts of imperialism early in the 20th century had one point wholly correct: imperialism is of the very being of capitalism, not a separable policy. The U.S. can't not fight, at whatever cost, to retain hegemony in the mideast and latin america. And the DP & RP are totally unified on this, differences being only tactical. Carrol ^^^^^^ CB; I agree with you that imperialism is not just a policy ,but why is it that Latin America and the Middle East are "ground points" and Viet Nam was not ? I think they may have made their point sufficiently in Iraq: "We will come in and mess you over bad, and we will do it based on some madeup stuff, in other words, without any good reason other than we are imperialism and we can invade anywhere anytime ( except Russia)." That establishes hegemony. Hell, they invaded Iraq 15 years ago and left. Now they are back. They can go back in the future. Hit and run imperialism. They may have to stay for a year longer or so, but they don't have to stay forever this time.
