This needs repeating, the fact is, that every rising civilization has been imperialistic, including Islam, which from the seventh century through to the 16th century established its hegemony in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and North Africa through bloody conquest. Should Muslims now feel guilty about conquering what were once Christian lands in the Middle East and North Africa? Should they be expected to vacate those lands and return them to the Christian fold? A rhetorical question, but there's no gainsaying the hypocrisy in denouncing the West for its imperial past while letting other cultures off the hook.

Removing the “log from one’s eye” can give a whole new dimension.

‘Draining the swamp’ is an interesting metaphor because is suggests a clarity achieved after removing muddied thinking - a pseudonym for critical thinking, perhaps?
The godfather of Islamic terrorism and inspiration to bin Laden, was an Egyptian intellectual named Sayyid Qutb and in 1948 believed, Western countries were populated by consumers who assume security and entertainment are a birthright, that they have a "right" to lives of comfort and plenty. What offended Qutb most, however, were American women. He loathed their "thirsty lips, bulging breasts, smooth legs," and denounced "that animal freedom which is called permissiveness, that slave market dubbed 'women's liberation'."
Many of the Christian right and not so right would simply agree with such sentiment. In a strange sort of warped, moralistic way, the Jihadist revolutionaries make a point – they see the very real corruption and hypocrisy of the West. In not understanding our own guilt or our corruption, neither then do we fully appreciate our ‘enemy’.

Harvard political scientist, Samuel Huntington, makes a worthy point: "Muslims increasingly see America as their enemy. If that is a fate Americans cannot avoid, their only alternative is to accept it and to take measures necessary to cope with it." In other words, how long can a liberal democracy tolerate the presence of a substantial number of those who regard themselves as a distinct and potentially hostile body? ... Perhaps as long as its own corruption (and guilt) persists.

To Horus - Latest reports from the White House do confirm that the days of US imperial swashbuckling might be over, with the realisation that our own wonderful Western military advancing technology has begun to backfire - surely soon in the shape of one Islamic-primed mini-nuclear bomb or even a number set off from more than a thousand k’s away.

Iraq has already shown how even conventional pattern bombing cannot now win a war - as even an attack on Iran will prove.

Scorning the philosophy of a Sermon on the Mount style forgiveness, which indeed Mandela has practised, what indeed have we got left then?

Just one imperialist unipolar nation, with a proven record of accord as with the Post WW2 Marshall Plan, along with the reformation of Immanuel Kant’s idea of a democratic United Nations, yet totally buggered up with the US and her allies holding four out of the five seats on the UN Security Council.

In the latest Comment and Analysis section of the Guardian newspaper, Timothy Garton Ash shows his headline - A Hint of Policy Shift in the Air

Across the Potomatic in the State Department the talk is not so much about bombs including possibly nuclear, but with other ways of promoting democracy in the Islamic world. Of course some still like it hot - Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney included, while others like a Senate hopeful Ned Lamont says it looks like we are left with a heap of lousy choices!

But be that as it may, the White House might be at last using diplomatic common sense rather than shaking the big stick backed by those hideous tools of war.

The Swansong of our so-called fruitcake academics, especially among the Humanities, has long been about a stronger and fairer United Nations without an imperialist monopoly, and it is so disheartening that so many of our Onliners will howl the UN down till maybe they will wake up to find the Uni’ fruitcakes were right all along

"What discouraged the supply of Nazis in the 1940s? War dried up the supply; the same thing that discouraged the Japanese militarists and Italian Fascists."

Holy smoke Pat, the financiers who made it happen got off scot free. First they shook hands across across the banquet table, then they shook hands across the battlefield - and they got off scot free at war's end.

- leaving us with Spitfire vs Messerschmitt books galore. That's not much of a reference library for a brave new future, is it?

I've got no problem with your descriptions of imperialist machinations post-war, except for the obvious omission that the self-same profiteers just carried on with business as usual. Who profited from all that? Don't you ever wonder?

The effort to dry up the money swamp where these creatures feed is casually tossed off as a "bourgeois democratic revolution". Those who go through the old incriminating cheque stubs are described as "pseudo left". When you have finally overcome a lifetime of propaganda, you will see that such labels are of no account.

"9-11 had nothing to do with wall-street, or Zionism, the Masons, Opus Dei etc.
It had everything to do with a mode of thinking found in some extremist Islamics which is so removed from your petty bourgeois mind-set you cannot comprehend it...."

You can fill a washing basket with labels (neo-cons, labor, liberal, islamo-fascist, zionist, communist) - but you'll be ever further from the truth. While blokes like you and I become fixated on the labels, the shoplifters make off with the goods. They have been doing that for the last hundred years of war - and laughing at our gullibility.

Little Johnny Howard cottoned on to that principle - and his corporate mates are set to do very well.

Tell me it's not true!

There are many nations who have suffered extreme poverty. Many, particularly in Asia have or are pulling themselves out of the mire. China South Korea Japan India (not Pakistan) Taiwan.

None of these have resorted to terrorism or hatred of the West.

The least success has been achieved it would seem, by the Islamic nations. If true why is that? Historically it was not always so. But then the people who produced algebra and scientific advances also produced the Karma Sutra. They were a liberal Islamic society.

Nowadays, Marilyn Shephard's views not with standing, far more Muslims have been killed by other Muslims than by American or Israeli bombs. (Darfur Bangla Desh Saddam etc.) Why is that? Any ideas?

And don't blame colonialism or the US invasion. India Japan Taiwan South Korea all made it.

you raise an interesting point logic - but it might b an issue of timing

PatrickM, was wondering where your pseudo-left wing titular originated from? Sounds so much like Leon Trotsky’s bitter depiction of both Lenin and Stalin when they forsook the principle of global dialectical Marxism to call it a social system of the state alone. As you know, Trotsky was finally murdered by Stalin's agents over it.

Of course, the Soviets did expand from a state system when Stalin took over East Europe after WW2. Just as Germany expanded from a state system when late in 1940 it captured pretty well the whole of Europe bar Britain Sweden and Spain.

Also as proven after Germany’s invasion of Poland, Stalin in rather friendly fashion moved into Eastern Poland as if already arranged.

In fact, history books do tell how before Hitler’s attack on Soviet Russia in mid 1941, Stalin had developed a kind of respect for Hitler proven of course by the Pact they had arranged to share Poland.

The point is, when looking back at history, whom can we really trust - as proven these days when a highly mobile military force like Israel can occupy a neighbour at only a moment’s notice. A full frontal attack these days especially from the air, can so much be termed a defensive attack, as GW Bush called his attack on Iraq as one to bring regime change to preserve American freedom. An attack on Iran might be argued the same.

Yet again when we think of international relations even beyond the 20th century, only the prefix has changed from gunboat diplomacy to missile diplomacy.

It is interesting that in my retirement from the farm nearly 33 years ago after a crash course was able to get into university studying history and politics. Seeing the Cold War was still on, found myself studying balance of power theory with an American teacher. Much about how the Americans and Soviets kept their nuclear missile technology as if they were in touch to preserve peace. With both having wandering nuclear-missile equipped subs hard to track guess it was a case of necessity.