America as a walled kingdom?
Brian Eno writes in Time about the US' sad future as a gated community.

'Too often, the U.S. presents the "American way" as the only way, insisting on its kind of free-market Darwinism as the only acceptable "model of human progress." But isn't civilisation what happens when people stop behaving as if they're trapped in a ruthless Darwinian struggle and start thinking about communities and shared futures? America as a gated community won't work, because not even the world's sole superpower can build walls high enough to shield itself from the intertwined realities of the 21st century. There's a better form of security: reconnect with the rest of the world, don't shut it out; stop making enemies and start making friends. Perhaps it's asking a lot to expect America to act differently from all the other empires in history, but wasn't that the original idea?'

I like the US. People like FDR, Lincoln, Martin Luther King stand high in my list of heroes. I get angry with some of my friends who describe themselves as progressive and insist that's a license to hold the US responsible for every evil in the world. I get especially grumpy with those who adhere to the benign view of the British empire that says nations like Australia and Canada gained political independence without a military struggle and forget that the only time the British tried to retain a colony of settlement by force, the US, with the help of their French allies, inflicted a resounding defeat. Empires learn from their defeats, not their victories.

Sadly, what repels me about the Iraq war is that it is a classic imperial exercise that violates every value the better angels of the American project have ever held. I am shocked that 55% of Americans hold Saddam guilty of 11 September on no evidence other than the embittered and deceitful rant emerging from the Busheviks. I think of the friends I have there and I know they do not support this aggressive war. I also know they will not read the Eno essay which is posted only in the European edition of Time.

There have been walled kingdoms before. The Ming dynasty put enormous effort and resources into constructing the Great Wall - the Star Wars of the fifteenth century. Anyone who wants to understand that decision should read The Great Wall of China by Arthur Waldron. When the Ming fell there was no battle at the Great Wall. The general-in-charge of the fortress at Xanhaiguan accepted a Qing bribe to open his gates. My fear is that the Bush administration's belief in pre-emptive wars will make more enemies than it suppresses and make the US as vulnerable to attack as the Ming were to simple bribery. In the end it is people, not walls, tanks and JDAMs that make the best defence. Fortress World will not work.

Values, not nostrums that they hate our freedoms are the best defence. Those values are the values of heroes like Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.