I've tried and tried but can't get past the basic misconception in bill kennedy's opening sentence. Whether or not you buy into the smokescreen of fairly jaundiced remarks "...over-reaching ego...jingoistic political rhetoric" etc etc is not really the issue.

The issue here is that bill's basic assumption, that the problems were caused by the Empire, is seriously flawed. These days it is more widely acknowledged, among those close to these situations, that the present problems in, for example, India/Pakistan, most of Africa and the Middle East, all started when Britain pulled out of those areas. Independence has not settled well in many of those places. So colonialism was not ideal, but in the grand order of things we may well look back on those times as representing a far better period than the present.

And though I think I understand the point bill is really making, viz, that US adventuring around the world will eventually have its own, negative, payback in the future, I think it is basically wrong to imply that the actions of Britain as a colonial power in the past can be directly compared with US incursions into, for example, Central America or even (dare I say) Afghanistan.

cheers, Terry

P.S. another little wobbler that bill included as a passing point -

"...Capitalism, which is by nature and design unjust..."

- only in popular left wing political rhetoric, I'm afraid. Capitalism - "an economic system designed to maximise creation of wealth for redistribution back to society as a whole through a system of taxation" - is in no way unjust in its design, whether you agree with it or not.