The last time a wing of the US ruling class -- Andrew Carnegie, above all -- seriously lent a hand to the cause of anti-imperialism was the time of the Spanish-American War, the time when the United States of America, for the first time in its history, was about to become an empire.* Even then, though, ruling-class opposition to it arose because the Spanish-American War entailed the acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, the last one as a precarious dependency, not as a viable settlement to be annexed as was the case with the War with Mexico. Acquisition of such dependencies was politically and economically costly, and hands-on management of them was administratively burdensome, unnecessary and in fact detrimental to American capital accumulation at home and abroad, realy becoming a thing of the past even in Carnegie's days, for the age of nationalism had already begun: "There was something to be said for colonies from the point of view of pecuniary gain in the olden days, when they were treated as the legitimate spoil of the conqueror. It is Spain's fatal mistake that she has never realized that it is impossible to follow this policy in our day."**
Today, that is not an issue. The George W. Bush administration, even the most revolutionary*** neo-conservative members among them, never, ever proposed that the United States acquire Iraq as a dependency. All American power elite have always agreed that the bulk of US troops will eventualy leave. The only question is whether they will leave Iraq without leaving any US bases behind and without establishing a pro-Washington and pro-Tel Aviv Iraqi government that will last after the US withdrawal.
We really cannot underestimate the fundamental commitment to Israel and Saudi Arabia widespread among the US power elite. It is not possible for Washington to have normal relations with the nuclear Iran that funds Hamas and Hizballah and that presents a populist and republican alternative to the Gulf states, without first ditching, or at least severely downgrading, its commitment to Israel and Saudi Arabia.
We need to help Americans understand the depth and breadth of commitment to Israel and Saudi Arabia that exists among the US power elite, the commitment rooted in their long-standing desire to have control**** over the world's largest oil supplies and not to cede them to (real and imaginary) populist Arabs. Otherwise, they end up thinking that they do not have to do anything on their own and that one wing of the power elite will fix the problem caused by the other wing. That is unlikely to be the case.
* The ideology of an anti-colonial imperialism was laid out earlier in an embryonic form, in the Monroe Doctrine (2 December 1823): "It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition in any form with indifference."
** Andrew Carnegie, "Distant Possessions: The Parting of the Ways," The Gospel of Wealth, New York: The Century Co., 1901 (originally published in the North American Review, August 1898), <http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/ailtexts/carn0898.html>.
*** Unfortunately, many leftists and neo-conservatives have one thing in common: in many cases, they underestimate both the legitimacy that governments enjoy in the eyes of their own respective populaces and the populaces' nationalism in developing nations. Underestimating both helps create an illusion that "regime change" is easy and desirable.
**** Control over the oil supplies in the Middle East is largely illusory, and policy motivated by an illusion tends to actually endanger rather than secure them, but there is no sign that any wing of the US power elite thinks that they should give it up. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>