Victor Davis Hanson on the

Victor Davis Hanson on the latest conceit of the European eilites — America as “hyperpower” and President Bush as Caesar. Hanson notes that ours is “a funny sort of empire.” We haven’t annexed anyone’s soil since the Spanish-American War. When we have overthrown the likes of Noriega, Milosevic, and Mullah Omar, we have replaced them not with legates or local client kings, but with elected leaders. And, “instead of the much-rumored pipeline we supposedly coveted in Afghanistan, we are paying tens of millions to build roads and bridges so that Afghan truckers and traders won’t break their axles.” This article makes it clear that the criticism we are hearing from Europe is not friendly, or even rational. It is, in Hanson’s words, the product of jealousy and envy on the part of “post-heroic and bored elites.” As such, it should be ignored, as should the institution that does the bidding of these jealous and envious elites, namely the United Nations.