An excerpt from John B. Judis' Folly of Empire. It is pretty goood. Let me highlight some remarks:
The first is about the philosophy underpinning the foreign policy of the Clinton Whitehouse. John Judis says that these years:
"... represented a triumph of Wilsonianism. Yet, during this period, conservative Republicans challenged Wilson's legacy. The most vocal dissenters included the second and third generation of the neoconservatives who had helped shape U.S. President Ronald Reagan's domestic and foreign policy. They declared their admiration for the Theodore Roosevelt of the 1890s and the United States' first experiment with imperialism. Some, including Max Boot of the Wall Street Journal, called on the United States to unambiguously “embrace its imperial role.” Like neo-isolationist and nationalist Republicans, they scorned international institutions and rejected the idea of collective security. But unlike them, neoconservatives strongly advocated using U.S. military and economic power to transform countries and regions in the United States' image."
"Al Qaeda and its terrorist network were latter-day products of the nationalist reaction to Western imperialism. These Islamic movements shared the same animus toward the West and Israel that older nationalist and Marxist movements did. They openly described the enemy as Western imperialism. Where they differed from the older movements was in their reactionary social outlook, particularly toward women, and in their ultimate aspiration to restore the older Muslim empire to world dominance. But after September 11, as Washington tried to understand what had happened, the neoconservatives insisted that these movements were simply the products of a deranged Islam, inflamed by irrational resentment of —in the words of historian Bernard Lewis—“America's freedom and plenty.” The neoconservatives discounted the galvanizing effect that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Western power in the region had on radical Islam."
"In trying to bring the Middle East into a democratic 21st century, Bush took it—and the United States—back to the dark days at the turn of the last century. Administration officials deeply misunderstood the region and its history. They viewed the Iraqis under Saddam the same way that Americans once viewed the Filipinos under the Spanish or the Mexicans under dictator Huerta—as victims of tyranny who, once freed, would embrace their American conquerors as liberators.Bush resolved the contradiction between imperialism and liberation simply by denying that the United States was capable of acting as an imperial power. He assumed that by declaring his support for a “democratic Middle East,” he had inoculated Americans against the charge of imperialism. But, of course, the United States and Britain had always claimed the highest motives in seeking to dominate other peoples. McKinley had promised to “civilize and Christianize the Filipinos.” What mattered was not expressed motives, but methods; and the Bush administration in Iraq, like the McKinley administration in the Philippines, invaded, occupied, and sought to dominate a people they were claiming to liberate."
The strength of the Judis article is that it shows the hsitorical roots of the imperial presidency in American history:
"Americans have always believed they have a special role to play in transforming the world, and their understanding of empire and imperialism has proven critical to this process. America's founders believed their new nation would lead primarily by example, but the imperialists of the 1890s believed the United States could create an empire that would eventually dwarf the rival European empires. The difference would be that America's empire would reflect its own special values."