"During the cold war, charges of U.S. imperialism in Korea and Vietnam were false. Those wars were about superpower struggles."

In further discussion regarding why we are in Iraq, specifically beyond the obvious reason mainstream liberals are now coming to terms with -- welcome finally to the party on this one -- namely the control of oil, Jonathan Alter makes the odd claim above which Josh quotes in TPM this morning.

Alter seems to think that because two imperialist superpowers were in competition over lands to dominate that somehow our aims were not imperialistic in nature. Apparently, it's only imperialism if the entity doing the dominating is a sole-superpower.

Sadly, with the large soapbox Alter has, this bizarre line of reasoning is likely to become conventional wisdom.

The more we incorrectly look at Iraq as some sort of new-fangled development, the more likely we are to not deal with its root causes, and, as I wrote in my last post here, the more likely we are to find ourselves in the same situation over and over again.

peace