As for the Consequences of Our Long Term Future this Veterans Day

I agree with every word of James Wolcott's latest:

The rest of the world has wised up. Todd points out that Germany, Russia, France, and even Turkey declined to join our great adventure in Iraq, and guess what?--nothing happened! Apart from sappy boycotts and juvenile gestures ("freedom fries"), they went unpunished. "True power is economic power, and that is what America lacks today." (Because of our indebtedness and deficits--we're a superpower depending on the kindness of creditors.) Moreover, the smaller countries that did lend minor support in Iraq have nearly all withdrawn from the fray, or about to do so, having unheeded the warning Todd lays down in his concluding chapter:

"We should not follow America's military leaders for whom the term 'theater of operations' has ceased being a metaphor. Fighting alongside the Americans in Iraq would only amount to playing a small role in a bloody vaudeville show."

From his lips to Tony Blair's ears.

...

"As for George W. Bush and his neoconservative helpers, they will go down in history as the grave diggers of the American empire."

Too many People don't realize it now, but we are becoming a meddlesome pain in the ass, a bully in the eyes of our traditional allies.

Meanwhile, we become more and more indebted to nations, like China, that are likely hoping (with some justification) for the moment they can pull the string to our economic unraveling and we complete the process of becoming a Potemkin Superpower only slightly better off than the Russians.

Bush will likely be out of office when that happens, but like Calvin Coolidge, his watch would have become the primary cause for the result. The only question remaining is who will be Hoover?