The US invasion of Iraq has been compared to a new form of colonialism, some new kind of imperial project carried out by the Bush mafia. It's the end of the "Republic," they say, and the beginning of the "American Empire."

And the Bush administration itself is said to be so bad as to represent a complete break with American traditions of government--so bad that even returning to a run of the mill corrupt Democratic president would be a step forward.

These assertions might make us (and especially the corrupt Democrats) feel better, but they aren't borne out by history. Bush is bad, but he's fully in line with American tradition (i.e. others must die so that we may live--and live extravagantly). His administration didn't just fall out of the sky; it's a natural growth of American style business as usual, furthered by Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

The US has been an imperial project since it began as an outpost of the British Empire. After the 13 colonies won their independence from Britain, the new American state didn't reject racist imperialism, it simply went freelance.

The new United States of America immediately got on with "Manifest Destiny," declaring that our God had given us a mandate to colonize the North American continent from sea to shining sea. Along the way our forebears exterminated, relocated and reeducated the actual owners of the land, and in order to make the job more palatable, advertised the "injuns" as diabolic and bloodthirsty savages every bit comparable to the current deionization of Arabs and Moslems.

That has never changed. The US government, including recent Democratic administrations, have continued to engage in all manner of fraud, slow extermination and outright force to take land coveted by white run corporate "citizens." For America's Native peoples the "Republic" never got started.

But it wasn't only stateless Indians that stood in the way of the expanding US empire. Most of the southwest, like Texas and California, was part of Mexico. In the 1840s, the imperial designers of the US began a race- and religion-based propaganda campaign that shrilly announced that the brown Catholics of Mexico intended to do us in through their treacherous and devilish ways, and that the only way to protect ourselves was to strike first. The US beefed up its military presence on the existing border and set about provoking a war or two. When the dust had cleared, the dictatorial regime ruling Mexico agreed to cede half its territory to the US.

In 1898, the US wanted to build a canal in what is now Panama-but it was then a province of reluctant-to-oblige Colombia. No problemo. The US covertly funded and supplied a separatist movement in the Isthmus. After winning its independence, the new Panamanian government immediately granted the US ownership of swath of its territory where the Panama Canal now sits.

By 1900 the USA ruled the tiny nations of Central America--the "Banana Republics"--as satellite states, installing and deposing rulers at will and when necessary, sending in the marines to "protect American interests."

>From the Spanish American war throughout the 20th century, the USA maintained a consistent pattern of imperial "interventions." After WWII, we found ourselves with a whole raft of new colonies, seized from Japan and their allies. We maintained our Heaven-mandated economic dominance not only with the judicious use of troops, but with bribery, assassinations, and coup.

Nothing that the US has done in Iraq marks a new strategy: not the flimsy pretext used to invade, not the doctrine of "preemptive war," nor America's unquenched need for empire.

The Patriot Act isn't anything new, either. Such things and worse have been used time and time again in America's history--though generally against people of color, immigrants, anarchists and communists. That is, marginalized groups.

What does make the Bush administration's approach different is that mainstream white folks are beginning to feel the threat that other folks have been feeling for a long time.

It is no doubt true that if the government is finally scaring us white people, things must be even worse for the long oppressed people of color. But putting it that way is a lot different than pretending that the depredations of Bush have changed the game completely.

What we white people are beginning to finally notice is, just as it happened to others, it can happen to us as well. It was bound to do so eventually.

It didn't happen to us for a long time because there were plenty of other people to terrorize and plenty of looted resources to subsidize our privilege. But as resources get more scarce, as the current targets of America's imperial domination fight more desperately, and as our corporate/government rulers become more desperate to maintain their power, there will naturally be less available to subsidize the relative freedom and comfort we have taken for granted. We liberal/progressive/lefty white folks will keep feeling more squeezed and more like targets of our corporate/government masters.

The American Empire, which depends entirely on petroleum products, has a high overhead. And with the increasing scarcity of oil the US is facing a difficult future, not only in terms of our world hegemony but also our economy and our standard of living. A minor disruption of oil coming from overseas, even for only a few weeks, would put a serious hurt on the economy. A major disruption for a few weeks or months could very easily turn the lights out on America entirely. But even without a catastrophe, the endemic corporate corruption, wasteful misuse of the environment and the myopia of the average American citizen have put the American project in severe danger of collapse. The crime syndicates (legal and illegal) that have been running America have been taking out without bothering to put anything back. The national infrastructure is crumbling, and increasingly large segments of the population are disaffected and angry. Even those with good jobs are finding themselves sick and exhausted. America is not a healthy nation.

There is no "electable" Democrat who is going to cure what ails the US because the very definition of "electability" includes not saying anything absurd--like the truth. At best a "not Bush" administration might buy some time and some breathing room. But unless we as individuals and as a nation start looking at our real history and our real situation, unless we are able to change our lives, individually and collectively, America is finished. Not because of the Bush neocon dream, but in spite of it.