Listening to all this talk about port security, Katrina relief, and Iraqi near civil war made me realize something which, of course, was there all along. We have just committed the most traditional sin-of-empire: overextension, this time in a multi-dimensional sense. The argument now made for the Iraq war: It was worth it, since we haven't had any terror attacks, Saddam was bad, they had elections (that still have not resulted in the formation of a government, by the way).  But, yeah, why is that actually so good for America?  Good that our country is now being drained of incredibly valuable resources, first and uppermost thousands of great humans/citizens, but also piles of treasure and more abstractly goodwill throughout the world and globo-economic stability...?   Leading to a complete leveling of the political landscape, total polarization in a red/blue plaid (despite all that "we are really purple" talk).   Katrina just showed how far away we really are from having a Secure Homeland: a government standing by as a great city and its people are overwhelmed by a hurricane every person in that city and in FEMA knew would someday come.  As is coming to light now with this port security uproar, and as John Kerry talked about a whole lot, ports are even more insecure than the Homeland.  All of this, all of these lives lost, this money spent, our global future darkened, for a never-ending war in the shape of a completely half-assed attempt of building even a rough outline of a peaceful, democratic state in the remains of a secular dictatorship that hated Osama just as much as we do, in a region whose only importance is drip drip dripping away with declining oil reserves...half a world away.  Look at the America we have today.  Are you really happy with it?