Question,

Who is going to stop us?

The statements like “world domination”, “war hawks”, “war for oil” or any of the like statements trying to paint a picture that this administration has one goal and one goal only to control the world. Why hasn’t this administration done so completely?

I continue to hear the arguments of how this administration has its sights and had its sights on world domination long before this administration even took office and yet I have to ask myself if this is how you really feel, and or think, what is your explanation on the fact that we haven’t just went ahead and put that hat on and did it.

With the ME, we could go in unopposed, in the guise of terrorist threats and take out all those governments and put in our own government that has our interests at heart (and their lives) With the rhetoric from North Korea, and under the pretense of national security we have not threatened in kind and countered all of North Korea’s threats with Nuclear strikes? Instead we asked for help from resistant allies such as Russia and China in this situation.

So, with all the talk of how this administration is vying for global domination, the question is: What reasons do you think are that we have not just gone ahead and done so already?

(note, this is not a question of weather they are or not, I just want to know why we haven’t already if you think/feel that is the goal)

It's still more efficient and cost-effective to pursue our goals through subterfuge and deception, even if we could also achieve them openly if we had to. The longer we can go without provoking coordinated opposition, the better it is for our business. Even Sun Tzu said "to subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."

I was about to start quoting Sun Tzu myself, but the quote provided by Platypus sums it up nicely.

If we tried to do it right now, there would be a coordinated war against us from virtually everybody in the international community. If we instead use our present allies to subdue our enemies there will be that much less opposition later to hinder our expansion, be it corporate or military.

Look at the war on Iraq for an example. We could have (hypothetically) unleashed our most devastating weapons and possibly never sacrificed a single American soldier. But then we wouldn't have the resources of the nation or the continued support of at least some in the international body. Even when we held back we still employed psychological warfare to try and discourage the enemy. It's simply more advantageous.

1. The United States in many ways already has achieved global domination. We are the richest country, we consume the greatest share of the world's resources, and it is our culture (whether for ill or good ) which permeates the farthest corners of the earth.

2. Does achieving global dominance (in the way you are implying) necessarily involve invading every country in western Asia? Of course not. Remember, there are a couple of important points:

A. That resource rich countries follow an economic structure which makes them conducive to favorable trade with global corporations. This often involves adhering to SAPs and austerity programs, as well as privatizing most aspects of their economies.

B. That the governments of these nations, whatever be their form of governance, are flexible and ultimately beholden to the US (and by proxy, US Corporations).

Controlling (either directly or through willing governments) resources like oil is very important, and will be for a long time to come. Some posters here have mentioned hydrogen-fueled vehicles as a debating point about our quest for resource control, as in, we don't need to control the oil, we're going to be using less and less anyway. But this doesn't really hold water. According to the National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap, produced by the administration and the energy industry, given current infrastructure, the production method used to make most of the hydrogen, at least for the next decades, will be mostly coming from traditional fossil fuel plants.

On a larger level, why would we NOT seek global domination? I think that there are many who are very afraid that if we don't move to control the oil, someone else will, and we may well not care for the result.

So whether the dominance we are seeking is to be explained in classical empire terms, or as the facilitating method to further enrich the mega conglomerates, I have no doubts that domination is definitely the name of the game.

I think that for many, the questioning of Mr. Bush and his administration is more a questioning of both the method of achieving the goal, and also the nature of the dominance, should it be achieved. It may even be philosophically correct to question the attempt at global domination, however, as a fan of history, I would say questioning that would be rather moot and from an action point of view, rather aimless. We are following a script written a long, long time ago. I think the biggest ideological battle in the world today is over exactly that: the nature of globalization, and the method of achieving it.

Is it more advantageous to give aid to numerous third world nations that don't like us anyway? Would there be a coordinated war against us from 'virtually everybody in the international community' for refusing to give money, especially since we're evil and ultimately want to take them over? How does our largess fit into your paradigm?

Of course, the short answer is : we don't want to.

The smart alec answer is : The thought hasn't occured to Dubya yet.

The hedged answer is : We would, but we are afraid of the consequences.

If we wanted oil, we would have started with Venezuela.

Of course, the nice thing about the American system : the President is only in power for 8 years. Not long enough to pull off large scale, slow-developing plots. If you don't see things ramping up quickly, they probably aren't in "the plan".

GWB waited over a month before sending anyone to Afghanistan.
GWB waited (fairly) patiently to give an ultimatum to Saddam, after waiting patiently for him to disarm.

Nothing is moving fast enough for some plot to take over the world to really be happening.

Of course, if the Democrats don't find a candidate with gravitas, they will never win back the White House.

Indeed. How long have Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz or Perle walked the corridors of power?

Too bad that they don't call the shots.

I seem to recall an eight year period where none of them "walked the corridors".

Quite easily, really.

A dog doesn't bite the hand that feeds it and a junkie doesn't kill his dealer... not until another hand or dealer can be found, anyway.

In this particular case, you are suggesting WE are intent on biting the 'dog' we're feeding. Why feed the dog first? Just want a fat, kind of healthier dog to bite?

I think Abs is suggesting that we are the feeder, and the rest of the world are (metaphorically) dogs. If they are dependent on us, if it remains true that whenever the US market sneezes everyone else's gets SARS, they'll be willing to overlook some number of our transgressions.

That tired argument is completely bogus. If we wanted oil, we could have went to Alaska for Pete's sake. But either scenario would have wreaked havoc with everyone within us and around us.

But as long as Shrub painted a picture of Saddam flying airplanes into our buildings, he gained CONTROL of a lot of oil fairly easily (all things considered). That's not to say we will steal it.

Which raises a point I hadn't heard before or thought of until now:

We pretty much have a seat on OPEC now, don't we?

Wow...talk about a backdoor deal. That was very deceitful. He capitalized on the deaths of many thousands of innocents to get control of oil.

No, we don't have a seat on OPEC. That is ludicrous.

BTW, Venezuela would have been a very easy sell. Political unrest, head of state that is dubious at best. Not much of a military. Much closer than Iraq.

Your point about Alaska is valid, though. If our motivation is oil, why not capatalize on AMERICAN oil reserves? The environmental movement has slowed to a non-factor (almost) these days, with Earth Day being just another "Democrats beat up on Bush" Day. We haven't opened ANWR, why would we spend 75 billion dollars to get Iraqi oil?

75 billion is a very conservative estimate, considering how much we've spent over the past 12 years patrolling the two no fly zones over there. Why did we wait so long to get that oil when we had the 'excuse' for years?

I still don't see the benefit in helping those who won’t support us anyway if we’re planning a hostile takeover of the world. We don’t have a lot to gain from boosting the economies of third world countries, if world domination is our ultimate goal. We could set up our own puppet governments, control them from within and exploit their natural resources. What is the point of feeding the people of N Korea with Kim Jong Il in charge?

Good point, Mrs P.

Because there's still profit to be made. To the people who really want the oil the price of access - whether it's $75B and some human lives in Iraq, or however many dollars and some caribou in ANWR - is paid by "someone else" and is therefore considered free.

Yes, businessmen are nothing more than mass murderers. Give me a break!

What's so ludicrous?

Iraq has a seat on OPEC. And now we own Iraq regardless of how you spin it.

I can't remember who said it now, but there is a saying that goes something like this: "The only perfect crime is one in which only two people know about it, and one of them is dead."

By now, if some of these guys have developed plans for world domination, someone would have blabbed about it. As others have pointed out, these guys have been in charge or on the fringes for 30 years now. Someone would have wanted to appear on every television pundit show. They would have wanted a seven-figure book deal. They would have wanted a movie based on their life story. And they would have wanted 6-figure fee for speaking engagements.

Stories of any interest at all that government officials want kept secret always come out eventually. Sometimes it takes a while, but they do come out. People cannot keep their mouth shut. If a president can't keep getting a BJ in the Oval Office a secret, then a sinister plot for world domination that would require dozens or hundreds of other people's compliance doesn't have a chance.

The Republican party is full of people who would want nothing to do with the rest of the world. Isolationists, free traders and fiscal conservatives all would want nothing to do with the costs of administering the entire world. None of them would have an incentive to keep such a plot secret.

The US isn't trying to take over the world because, in the end, it isn't in its best interests. The US is only interested in increasing its trade all over the world and its foreign policy has largely reflected that.

PS - not germane to this discussion is the fact that many of its economic policies - steel protection, soft wood quotas, farm subsidies - have been misguided efforts to increase trade for US companies.

There's nothing sensational to write about here, though there have been books, articles and pamphlets regarding the view that the U.S. is seeking to expand ever further and control more and more of the world -- whether it be territorial or economical.

If there were some plan to just launch a series of coordinated strikes around the world and seize power one day, perhaps it would make a bigger splash. As it stands, all we have are modest selling books detailing our expansion in the past and the ways in which we are expanding today.

We won't have to fly the flag over every corner of the globe to control a growing percentage of it. As long as leaders know their position is cemented only in their appeasement of American interests, we'll never have to. Of course, it won't even matter to us if these leaders are loathed within their own borders by their own people. All we have to do is be the hand that directs the puppets.

It's possible, though in many cases it is the politicians who double as businessmen responsible. It's happened before, and it's not as ridiculous as some make out to think the war in Iraq isn't a similar scenario. Hopefully it won't reveal itself to be.