America starting to collapse?

Empire's don't allow annexed lands to install their own governments. Both of your examples are also prime examples of how the US isn't exhibiting empire-like characteristics. There are no US combat troops left in Iraq, so frankly the fact that you guys keep bringing that up as an example of American Imperialism is getting kind of old. We still have combat troops in Afghan, but again, they run their own country, and Karazi is on record numerous times in support of our continued presence there. Even if we go into Libya, which is unlikely considering we've backed off on our military involvement in the past two months, it wouldn't be imperialist unless we took over the country or implemented a form of mercantilism.

Even in Iraq, despite all the "no war for oil" protest, we didn't implement any form of mercantilism. Iraq only exports about 1/5 of it's oil to the US. If we were an empire, why would we let Iraq freely trade its natural resources? Wouldn't we just take it all for ourselves and not even compensate them for it? Whether or not the Iraqi government owns the oil, or it is in private hands, it's not in ours, it's in theirs.

Justification is a tricky thing. Do we ever talk about the justifications that Greece or Rome had for their conquests? Not really, so I don't see how it's really crucial to this conversation. Regardless of what you feel about the reasons for US involvement in foreign policy, it's very different then what Empire's have done. Even in the shadier instances of US foreign policy, it's not like we had a sitting US president saying "these are our laws, now pay us taxes, and give us your manpower / material resources"

PS- friendly debate as always. I've got pretty thick skin anyway so even if things get heated, it's not like I'm about to rage out at a computer screen....

pps - Yes, please don't double post. I've been pretty lenient with enforcing this, but it is against the rules, and I'm going to have to start cracking down on it where I see it. It isn't really fair that were infraction some people for it and not others.

ppps - After all those ninja'd posts.... (Ps this is how you don't double post... seeing all the extra posts while I was writing this I can choose to address them before clicking submit again)

sales tax is different then a gas tax... There as some states in the US where they levy an actual tax on gas, which is why you see different gas prices around the country. Also most European nations tax gas, which is why their gas prices are higher then ours.

It was a flaming wall of text that said "You just got Pedro'd" or something similar...