Sory DougR, but the evidence that the US aspires to dominate is there for all to see. Consider the number of military interventions in other countries since WW2 (around 40?); consider US willingness to fund an ad hoc war crimes tribunal at the Hague (ICTY) but to deny to any international court jurisdiction over its own war crimes; consider the breaking of a promise by the US prosecutor at the Nuremburg show trials that America would be answerable under the same laws if ever that was appropriate, and read again the PNAC stuff so readily available on the internet.

The US may be aiming for a world where countries "get along which each other" but only if they do so on US terms. For instance the benign democratic socialism of Chile and the "workers' self-management" of Yugoslavia under Tito and post Tito, would never hav been acceptable. Neither is Castro's Cuba, though what business that is of the US I fail to see.

Mercifully pdq (and DougR) are wrong however, to the extent that the US has already overplayed its hand. You can only achieve so much by bombing innocent civilians from high altitude. When it comes to controlling the ground, the US hasn't got an army that can begin to do the job. Not even in Afghanistan, which was already the poorest nation on earth before the US went in.

As for Iraq, America is now staring at a truly monstrous catastrophe. The Sunnis may be a minority, but they are a strongly placed minority thanks to being favoured for many years by the Ba'athist regime. By boycotting the forthcoming farce of an election they                                       are preparing the ground for civil war. In which event American plans to Haliburtonise the economy, grab the oil and establish military bases will go out of the window. Most of the world will watch the spectacle of American humiliation with scarcely contained shadenfreude.

Meanwhile the paving stones of old Babylon are flattened by American tanks, priceless artefacts from the hanging gardens are crushed and bundled into sandbags and the whole archeological site is compromised by layers of gravel and chemicals. All this by US troops who "fully understand and appreciate" the historic importantce of the site, according to their senior officers.