The more things change, the more things really haven't

“Imperial Temptations”: John Edwards, Barack Obama and the Myth of Post-WWII U.S. Benevolence by Paul Street

The conventional wisdom in the U.S. is that G.W. Bush has introduced into US foreign policy an unprecedented policy of... well... evildoing around the globe. If you are an adherent of this bit of conventional wisdom, allow this article a chance to dissuade you.

As for me, I tend to agree with my boy Richard Perle, who once said that people who think that the fundamental aims of US government foreign policy, and the methods to achieve those aims, will change along with a change in administration from Republican to Democrat are out of touch with reality. He was talking about the future of US foreign policy, but his point is applicable to the past as well. From post-WWII neocolonialism, to colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines, all the way back to brute conquest and genocide of the American Indians - while administrations and even parties change, a euphemized and ideologized lust for power remains the same.