So much for dealing with our problems like grown-ups. The United States said today (through its Secretary of State, Colin Powell), that even if Iraq complies with existing and future U.N. resolutions on weapons inspections, as Bush was demanding before the General Assembly just a little more than a week and a half ago, we nevertheless still reserve the right to try and remove Saddam by force unilaterally. Well, Dubya didn't keep that multilateral thing going for too long, did he now? I think it's now becoming obvious to everyone outside of America - with the exception perhaps of Tony Blair, who inexplicably has become an American proconsul in this "War on Terror", a reasonably articulate mouthpiece we can trot out to beguile our European allies and our own easily-fooled domestic opposition who are rightfully horrified at anything that comes out of President Bush's mouth- that we're no longer interested in what the world thinks of us, whether Allies or Axis, friends or foes. Just look at our new vision statement for the 21st Century. A nation whose avowed ideals were once the promotion of democracy, human rights, and freedom has dedicated the sum total of its resources and military might to a glorified global game of King of the Hill. Granted, our government spent an awful lot of time paying lip service to the "liberty and justice for all" line, while fostering the exact opposite both at home and abroad, but to me an integral part of being an American was the struggle to win that freedom for all races, colors, creeds not just here in the States, but ultimately - by backing such entities as the United Nations as an international force for good - for the entire world someday. But the mask is off now. For the first time in American history, we're announcing to the world that, in the end, even for us, despite of decades if not centuries of protestations to the contrary, (to quote last night's Buffy) "It's about power." By stating that one of the new cornerstones of our national security strategy is to prevent any other nation in the world from becoming our rival, like it or not, we're admitting to the world that the old race is still afoot, and that we're not particularly interested in the international cooperative agencies that emerged from the wreckage of the last round of Great Power shenanigans. Flush from our Cold War "victory" over the Soviet Union, which is celebrated here as an unqualified triumph despite the fact that we armed and radicalized the entire world (including such places as Afghanistan) to win it and only avoided fiery nuclear destruction on multiple occasions by sheer luck, we've decided to make beating down the competition our paradigm in perpetuity. In other words, we've learned nothing at all.

Come on world, who wants to play next?