Three Exceptional Facts About America

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176050/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_the_superpower_as_victim/#more
Three Exceptional Facts About America
It’s Safe to Be Paranoid in the U.S.
By Tom Engelhardt
Given the cluttered landscape of the last 14 years, can you even faintly remember the moment when the Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War ended in a stunned silence of shock and triumph in Washington, Eastern Europe was freed, Germany unified, and the Soviet Union vanished from the face of the Earth? At that epochal moment, six centuries of imperial rivalries ended. Only one mighty power was left.
There hadn’t been a moment like it in historical memory: a single “hyperpower” with a military force beyond compare looming over a planet without rivals. Under the circumstances, what couldn’t Washington hope for? The eternal domination of the Middle East and all that oil? A planetary Pax Americana for generations to come? Why not? After all, not even the Romans and the British at the height of their empires had experienced a world quite like this one.http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176050/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_the_superpower_as_victim/#more