Most Americans I've met are honest, decent, helpful people.

Yet in "Made In America" (Bill Bryson), one reads: "By 1960, military spending accounted for 49.7 percent of the federal budget - more than the combined national budgets of Britain, France, West Germany and Italy...Of the $50 billion that America distributed in aid in the 1950s, 90 percent was for military purposes."

At that time, of course, the Soviets were a threat. But writing in 1999, Richard Maybury ("The Thousand Year War in the Mideast" worth reading, by the way) states: "The US has troops in 144 countries, which is about two-thirds of all the countries on earth."

Could someone explain to a non-American why US citizens keep supporting administrations so preoccupied with war, and with setting up, arming and controlling tin-pot regimes all around the world?

The good-guy image is wearing thin.