ABSTRACT
The September 11 attack on America was payback for United States imperialism. The United States must become a kinder, gentler nation, must eschew quixotic missions abroad, must become, in Pat Buchanan's phrase, 'a republic, not an empire'. In fact this analysis is exactly backward: The September 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and ambition; the solution is to be more expansive in the goals and more assertive in their implementation. It is striking-and no coincidence-that America now faces the prospect of military action in many of the same lands where generations of British colonial soldiers went on campaigns. Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets. Following the defeat of the German and Ottoman empires, their colonial possessions were handed out to the Allied powers, in theory to prepare their inhabitants for eventual self-rule.
