1) Since WWII, the US is responsible for more death and destruction outside its borders than any other state.

2) China does not need the US for continued economic well being. The world market is more than large enough.

3) The fighting spirit which leads Americans to spread death and destruction abroad must also be curbed. There's a lack of introspection in American culture.

I never even got to the battlefield part of the Rock; what a wasted opportunity to visit one of our most hallowed grounds! You are on the same track as my late father, who grew up in Chicago's tough ethnic neighborhoods of the pre WW l era, who never believed for one moment that the Japs had had the fightin' spirit whipped out of em'.
I would say, expert or not, you have revealed a truth here.

The primary reason for our post-WWII presence in Japan was not our need for forward bases. The primary reason we took on the burden of defending Japan and maintaining bases there was the widespread fear of a resurgent Japan repeating its aggression in the Pacific theater. That reason still exists, and as some have pointed out, with the rise of a potential partner in China, the danger may well be even greater. Should we care? I don't know enough about geopolitics and all our alleged interests in the area to be able to answer that. But it certainly seems to me to be a point that should be considered when discussing this topic.

Prof. Wilson's assumption that "China cannot hurt us" I find harder to understand. Getting away from the idea that we must manage the world is all well and good, but should not be based on the assumption that no one can hurt us but ourselves.

I would like to know where China has shown it can be trusted to forswear doing anything that costs America in treasure, prestige, and potentially, as in its nefarious Korea machinations, blood. The Chinese have a deep seated animosity toward Europeans, and those already in America constitute a vast fifth column, as repeatedly demonstrated by their involvement in industrial spying and counterfeiting.

Many of those coming into power in China today are former Cultural Revolutionists, the hardest of hard-core Maoists, whose anti-Americanism was far more virulent than that of their American '60s campus imitators. They may not wish to annihilate us; but they are certainly aware of our waning strength, and of their growing opportunity to reduce us to impoverished, drugged chattel of company store China.

Yes, there must be some sects of WASP church-going and home-schooling families out in the hinterlands who need to be taught a little Waco- or Ruby Ridge-type lesson concerning what happens when you run afoul of the great empire.

And I do not see how such guilt could not affect how we relate to the rest of the world -- especially when we start invoking moral terms.

Thus it seems more than a little odd to dwell on how awful women have it in Saudi Arabia, much less to imply that the US has been some unprecedented, near-divine blessing to the world, "whereby all of mankind, even to this day, has enjoyed untold wealth and increases in the standard of living which were undreamed of in 1945. This evil America Empire has kept the peace..."

Again, unless your one of those who drew the short straw, in which case you don't enjoy no untold wealth and you don't so much as receive the piece of the grave, being consigned instead to a dumpster.

If Al Q'aida nuked cities the size of Chicago 13 times over, they still couldn't reach the death toll Americans have inflicted on themselves.

But the nice thing about our way is that it's out of sight, out of mind, so we can all still go about our business stuffing ourselves with consumer rubbish.

"A society that accepts the killing of a third of its babies as women's "emancipation," that considers homosexual marriage to be social progress, that hands out contraceptives to 13-year-old girls at junior high ought to be seeking out a confessional – better yet, an exorcist – rather than striding into a pulpit like Elmer Gantry to lecture mankind on the superiority of 'American values.' "

- Pat Buchanan