How empires fall

Buchanan shows how the Bush Regime has broken from the sound policy of President Reagan and is replicating the British folly of self-destruction. "There is hardly a blunder of the British Empire we have not replicated," laments Buchanan.

The distinct American hubris that we are "the indispensable nation" and the braggadocio that we are an "omnipower" has us overcommitted in alliances that we cannot fulfill. Despite 25 percent of the Iraqi population killed, injured or displaced, the "world's only superpower" cannot even control Baghdad.