There are two "I" words that are taboo in Washington: Impeachment and Imperialism.

Four years after Bush invaded Iraq on the basis of lies, there should be no question that Bush and his Neocons are old-fashioned Imperialists who want to conquer resource-rich countries like Iraq and Iran and then let their corporate cronies steal every last penny they can.

That's why they created the Project for a New American Century in 1997.

PNAC's policy document, "Rebuilding America's Defences," openly advocates for total global military domination. Many PNAC members hold highest-level positions in the George W. Bush administration.

That's why Bush was focused on invading Iraq at the first cabinet meeting, as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill wrote in his book The Price of Loyalty:

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

That's why Donald Rumsfeld wrote a plan to invade seven countries shortly after 9/11, according to Gen. Wesley Clark:

“This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

Obviously those plans were revised after Rumsfeld's dreams sank in the sands of Iraq. But have they been discarded or merely put on hold? And why have the American people been kept completely ignorant of these plans? Are we a Democracy - or an Imperialist Dictatorship?

Now comes news that Condi Rice has hired America's leading Imperialist: Prof. Eliot A. Cohen. Here's Wikipedia:

In 1997, Cohen became a founding member of the Project for the New American Century, which became known as a center for prominent neoconservatives. He has been a member of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, a committee of civilians and retired military officers that the U.S. Secretary of Defense may call upon for advice, since the beginning of the administration of President George W. Bush. He was put on the board after acquaintance Richard Perle put forward his name. In the run-up to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, he was a member of Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a group of prominent persons who pressed for an invasion.

As Glenn Greenwald writes today, Cohen's response to 9/11 was to write an op ed for the neocon Wall Street Journal declaring World War IV against "militant Islam." Defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban were certainly not enough; Cohen wanted to engineer the "overthrow" of the Iranian mullahs, then Saddam, offering this pearl of wisdom on "target[ing]" Iraq:

the costs of failing to do so, and the opportunities for success, make it good sense.

Of course we all now know what the "opportunities for success" were in Iraq and what "good sense" it made to invade.

Greenwald also points out that Cohen's post-9/11 strategy was simply an extension of the "Imperial Strategy" he outlined in a 1998 essay in the New Republic.

Another way to put it is that the United States needs an imperial strategy. Defense planners could never admit it openly, of course, and most would feel uncomfortable with the idea, but that is, in fact, what the United States at the end of the twentieth century is--a global empire.

Of course Cohen isn't ignorant of the fate of past empires, and warned of both military "overextension" and domestic "complacency." But these minor inconveniences certainly did not deter Cohen from advocating imperialism. In fact, he warned Americans to expect periodic "fiascos":

The United States is today by far the most powerful state on the planet. If it chooses to remain so, citizen and soldier alike must brace themselves for the occasional imperial fiasco.

But such "fiascos" were Cohen's secondary concern; his primary concern was persuading Americans to love Imperialism - an idea that is antithetical to a nation that was created over outrage at our treatment within the 18th Century British Empire, and came to global dominance by defeating the ambitions of Hitler's 20th Century German Empire.

More important, they will have to accept the uncomfortable notion that they are wielding military power in a way that is historically unusual for a country that has long viewed empires with proper republican suspicion. America's strategic vision will thus have to peer inward, as well as out, if we are to play our new role in the world successfully.

Greenwald's response to this complete betryal if American history is profound and urgent.

These are the radical principles laid out unabashedly by the Bush State Department's new Counselor, which are the same principles still driving the administration. We are in the middle of World War IV. We have numerous countries against whom we must wage war. The highest strategic priority is to change the government of Iran, with whom we can never negotiate. And the ultimate goal is to rule the world with our military force as the Supreme Imperial Power.

That is the neoconservative vision at its core. And the untold damage it has wreaked on our country has not diminished their influence in any way in this administration. They are still in control, particularly in the area they care about most -- the Middle East. And they have dealt with their greatest fear -- war-avoidance with Iran prior to regime change -- by installing one of their very own extremists to scrutinize and check the State Department.

This is really the debate America needs most, but is also the one we are furthest away from being able to conduct -- is the goal of the U.S. really to maintain and expand imperial world domination? The dangers to our country from that pursuit are grave and obvious. They are precisely the ones about which, among others, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Dwight Eisenhower most urgently warned, and Jefferson similarly emphasized continuously that the most important obligation a country has is to avoid war except when the nation's security is directly attacked.

But that, more than anything, accounts for the current predicament of America. We have ceased adhering in these matters to the principles of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Dwight Eisenhower, and have instead become a nation of Dick Cheneys, Victor Davis Hansons, Richard Perles, and Eliot Cohens.

These are -- to use Russert's phrase -- "those same people" who caused the Iraq disaster and have their sights set on further damage still. They do not want to avoid war at all, but instead believe that it's glorious and elegant and empowering. They want to ensure a state of Permanent War, complete with all of the internal constrictions of liberty which wars inevitably entail, because they view the United States not as a republic, but as an empire which -- in order to fulfill all sorts of agendas -- can, should and must rule the world with superior military force. There is a temptation to dismiss "those same people" as irrelevant extremists, but as Cohen's Friday-announced appointment reflects, they are anything but irrelevant.

Of course the Neocons will not enter into this debate. They don't care at all about occasional "fiascos" like Iraq - it's just part of the cost of doing business as The Empire. Other than Cohen himself, their kids don't go off and fight in their Imperial Wars - they leave the fighting to the working class, and then dump them in rat-infested privatized hospitals when they come home without limbs.

Thanks to the pro-Imperialist Corporate Media, the American people are completely unaware of the Imperial ambitions of the Neocons who are running - and destroying - America.

So it's up to all of us to educate ourselves and to mobilize the American people to end this war in Iraq, prevent the next one in Iran, and impeach and imprison the war criminals who created this nightmare.