Jonathan Schell on Bush's Failed Empire

TomDispatch reprints from the Nation Jonathan Schell on Bush's Failed Empire:

"Consider, for instance, the following passage from a speech called 'The Price of Empire,' by the great dissenter against the Vietnam War Senator William Fulbright.

'Before the Second World War our world role was a potential role; we were important in the world for what we could do with our power, for the leadership we might provide, for the example we might set. Now the choices are almost gone: we are almost the world's self-appointed policeman; we are almost the world defender of the status quo. We are well on our way to becoming a traditional great power -- an imperial nation if you will -- engaged in the exercise of power for its own sake, exercising it to the limit of our capacity and beyond, filling every vacuum and extending the American ‘presence' to the farthest reaches of the earth. And, as with the great empires of the past, as the power grows, it is becoming an end in itself, separated except by ritual incantation from its initial motives, governed, it would seem, by its own mystique, power without philosophy or purpose. That describes what we have almost become…'

Is there a single word -- with the possible exception of 'almost' at the end of the paragraph -- that fails to apply to the country's situation today? Or consider this passage from Fulbright's The Arrogance of Power with the Iraq venture in mind:

'Traditional rulers, institutions, and ways of life have crumbled under the fatal impact of American wealth and power but they have not been replaced by new institutions and new ways of life, nor has their breakdown ushered in an era of democracy and development.'"