Coming from someone who regarded the bombing of hundreds of thousands of civilians including women and children as an "acceptable price" to pay for the upkeep of Empire, such a statement might not be surprising. One is left wondering though how tall she had to stand and how far she had to see to reach the conclusion that these innocent people were themselves, in a word, 'dispensable', collateral damage in the noble cause of preserving the the imperial domain.
Yet whilst it may not have been widely recognized, the collapse of communism and the hindsight-laden 'we told you so' triumphalism -- both ideological and nationalistic in character and fervor -- that inevitably resulted, created an imperial existential crisis (a 'psycho-political' quandary if one likes) for the US. America was at/in one of its most significant 'crossroads' Mo's: what or who was going to take the place of the Godless Ones?
On the Merits of Warlike Enterprise
The vacuum that defined this "quandary" was officially and spectacularly filled as we all know less than 10 years later on one sunny September morning in 2001, apparently by a bunch of rag-tag Islamic/Arabic radicals collectively massaging an existential 'hard-on' as it were for Uncle Sam and everything he purportedly stood for.
Whilst Americans themselves -- and much of the rest of the world -- were plummeted into a state of shock, horror and outrage, U.S. power elites breathed a sigh of relief, themselves sensing a once in a lifetime opportunity to realize the pernicious ideology that up to that point, wasn't going anywhere much. America now knew who its real enemy was once again. Or at least that's what it seemed like. But as the saying goes, appearances aren't always the best depiction of reality, which when one thinks about it, could be a fitting epitaph for an Empire!
Shortly thereafter the traumatic event of 9/11, the so-called Bush Doctrine (BD) of 2002, the Bush administration's National Security Strategy 'hastily' drafted in response to the attacks, was updated with a Cold-War 'us v them' worldview to deal with The New World Order (aka The New 'Us and Them').
As it goes, 9/11 was New Year's Day for the New American Century then. The Bush Doctrine emanated from, and was initially prescribed pre-9/11 largely by the assorted real and/or imagined threats posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the one-time US client tyrant of Iraq, and a himself the 'carryover' from the first Gulf War prosecuted in 1991 by the president's pater familias George HW Bush (POTUS Number 41).
But after 9/11 the BD went on to encompass -- as evidenced by the developments and events that followed in its wake -- Al Qaeda terrorists, Taliban fundamentalists, Islamo-fascists, Wahhabi extremists, jihadists, and assorted messianic Muslims. It was an expansive menu to be sure. In a nutshell, the godless infidel communists bent on taking over the world then were replaced by the god(aw)ful Islamist nihilists cum anarchists bent on destroying it.
But the Doctrine for good measure also included addressing the 'clear and present' threats posed by rogue nations such as then 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-il's North Korea, the Iranian 'imamocracy', and Bashar al-Assad's Syria, to name the obvious ones, who in varying degrees were either suspected or accused of harboring, encouraging, bankrolling and/or otherwise supporting various groups of 'towel-headed' terror-meisters.
As far as new best enemies go, America was blessed with a plethora of choice then. It doesn't come any better than this! The Evil Empire over time then morphed into an Axis of Evil! As defined by the Doctrine though, for the ROW, the "choice" was limited -- you were either with us or against us, in our hour of need of course. Which we might surmise was Bush's way of saying you can have the security of the slave or the peace of the grave.
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