My affection for bombast, sir? You wound me! Indeed, for you, of all people, to accuse mois of bombast is as unjust and laden with irony as it would be for Richard Nixon to have accused me of shifty-eyed mendacity. ;-)

Your nation has been invading people in an aggressive fashion ever since it sprang from the loins of the British Empire in the late 1770s. It has attacked all the Indian tribes it could physically reach, it has attacked Canada and Mexico, it has invaded numerous Latin American nations and toppled their governments through CIA-arranged coups, it has massacred hundreds of thousands of Filipinos after taking those islands from Spain in 1898...it has probably invaded more countries in the last 200 years than any other single nation on Earth. That's what I call an aggressive empire.

You are quite right, though, that the USA is a complex and multi-faceted nation with many good qualities as well. I never said it wasn't, but I am not discussing every single aspect of the USA at the moment, I'm simply discussing its imperial policy. To say a nation is imperialist is not to say that it is ONLY imperialist.

The Romans, after all, were imperialists too...but they were also a brilliant nation which gave many great gifts to the world. I would say that about the USA as well, and I would also say it about the Russians and the Chinese. Great empires are built by great nations.