> Leaving Semitism pro- and anti- out of it, there's still a real puzzle here:
> how do we account for apparently irrational behavior on the empire's part?
> Maybe the invasion of Iraq was rational from an imperial point of view -- but
> I have yet to see a convincing explanation of just how and why it was
> rational. What did the empire get that it didn't already have? What danger
> did it avert, or hope to avert?
It may very well have not been rational at all, being that it wasn't headed up by a team of cloned Mr. Spocks. This is something that comes up against critiques of the "war for oil" -- the planners and pushers may have had in the back of their minds a notion of, "yeah, we'll install a democracy [in the usual operative sense of the word], and oh BTW, we'll control the oil, too," regardless of utilitarian senselessness of it. Their thinking needn't be any deeper than a protest sign.
-- Andy