Warren Piece
I'm sorry to talk past some of your points. I'll try to address other aspects later. Otherwise the title of this post would become even more appropo.
Oh, I understand, we both write so much that a response either has to address the top level summary, or hit only a few of the detail points.
A top level approach with a few examples: I think in your effort to craft good rhetoric you shorted logic. To wit:
Saying the US has the right to change these people seems like arrogance - but is it really? Isn't that the same excuse southerners used to defend slavery? Northerner arrogance? It was a given that blacks were naturally "shiftless, criminal, but built for performing human labor".
Why should we have the right to force our morality on slaveowners and slave states and not governments of slave nations?
The slaveowners were Americans--they were us. A central point in Bowser's moral thesis, as in many others rejected by Conservatives, is that our greatest obligation is to reform ourselves, and to hold ourselves to a higher standard than others. Yes there's a double standard that applies to America, and we should be proud of that fact. High expectations are a compliment.
You can't argue moral equivalence here. An American slaveowner is the worst kind of slaveowner, by our own definition of ourselves as morally superior.
On the broader questions of morality, Bush is constantly creating moral quandaries where none should exist, using moralistic rhetoric to rationalize actions that might otherwise be neutral--his messianic fervor clearly signals intentions well beyond self-defense, and that makes everybody nervous. People accept self-defense, but they rightfully push back against somebody who claims to be on a mission from God.
Ever had a friend find religion? Nothing kills a friendship faster than proselytizing; and don't you find the newly-religious a bit scary in their tunnel vision obsession? That's our boy Dubya--he reminds me all too much of a guy I knew who joined Scientology, and overnight became a monster on a mission from Elron to create Scientology's paradise on Earth.
Technically, the Confederate States of America was a nation and was recognized as such by other nations. (Had the UN existed surely they would have recognized it immediately as well;-) Lincoln decide not to recognize their will and to put his own above it. Bush has basically been doing the same thing since October of 2001.
You stretched logic past the breaking point there, man. The CSA was a region of the United States in rebellion against the United States. The Civil War took place within the borders of the United States, and the American President had jurisdiction in the matter.
You don't mention Iraq by name, but that's obviously the parallel you're trying to draw, and it's a doozy, likening a formerly sovereign nation a third of the way around the world to a rebellious province. That's Genuine Imperial Thinking™ there, Techie. Is there any part of the world that you don't think the United States has a right to control?
Where is the moral line of demarcation that says morality and righteousness are permissable on this side but must be forgotten on this [the other?] side of the imaginary line?
Gee, I dunno, maybe that line of demarcation can be found at the border between our States. We tolerate variations in definitions of morality as embodied in State laws and custom--some states heavily regulate alcohol sales while in others, like Texas, anything goes; laws dealing with sex--prostitution, permissible acts, age of consent--vary by state; tax policy (a moral question to Conservatives) varies by state; penalties for the same crime differ between states...the list goes on and on. If we recognize the right of individual States to define their own morality, it's hypocritical to not recognize that right in other nations.
Federalism scales up as well as down. It's ironic that Conservatives want Washington to treat other countries in the way that outrages them when it's done to states.
A general theme of your essay revolves around the idea of a limited "window of opportunity" before the US loses its power by the end of the century. You're not the first Conservative I've talked to who thinks that America has less than a century to live, and it paints the unnerving picture of a sub-religious variation of Apocalyptic thinking. It's all going to end soon, so why not go out in a blaze of glory?
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy more than an inevitability. A rigid United States clinging to a 19th Century worldview will eventually break. After the distraction of the terrorists, the real problem awaits us: As you note, India and China, on a trajectory to achieve technological parity and population superiority by mid-century. (Gosh, you think those two are delighted that Bush is fixated on terrorism, or what?) If our philosophy is an all-or-nothing one, then yep, beyond a doubt, the United States will some day fight one war too many and will go down in flames.
A large part of our nonviable all-or-nothing thinking is economic. Resisting transition to a sustainable longterm economy will seal our doom. We can't go on forever acting as if the world's resources are infinite, and we're entitled to everything; the theme of the middle-to-late 21st will be "share or die". Is a cup of even Kenyan StarBucks worth committing national suicide for?
I refuse to go along with the suicidal pessimism of the Right. America can last forever if we think our way through the years to come instead of impotently raging against inevitable change. It doesn't have to turn out the way you describe.