American prestige? Prestige is for wimps!

There's a lot of handwringing, and so there should be, over America's loss of prestige under Bush. But do you think it's been lost by accident or design?

The United States rose to global hegemony in large part thanks to "soft power". Yes, there was the trump card of the military, but there were other suites to play: among them, economic, industrial, financial and moral.

That was then. The New American Century anticipates a loss of soft power, principally to Europe and China, and compensates for it by playing the trump of the military. That's PNAC, that's the Bush defense strategy, and that's Iraq. And that's meant a seemingly catastrophic loss of prestige, but the loss has already been factored into the calculations. Last year, in his letter of resignation, the State Department's John Brady Kiesling asked Colin Powell "Has oderint dum metuant really become our motto?" Let them hate us so long as they fear us. Yes, Mr Kiesling. It has.

American power is getting hollowed out. It's losing its soft centre, its coercive prestige, and all that remains is a hardened, militarized shell. And it's not happening by accident.

I like the sound of my own voice when I'm drinking. :beer:

you get it right again...It's good cop, bad cop....and guess who the bad cop is?

Perfect setup for the globalists to rally the troops and knock us down.

everything according to plan , just like clockwork.