Koltar hasn't called me an anti-semite yet. He has insinuated that I am, but he's far too cowardly......

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I'm glad you find me so worthy of emulation. Unfortunately, you are a publicly reviled and scorned tumour on the foreskin of this forum, a calcite accretion of idiocy in the forum's bladder, an utterly vile person who wastes electrons with every tap of his keyboard, and therefore, while it is hilarious to everyone else and myself that I am insulting you, no one really finds your replies particularly funny. They are too clearly the actions of an ape.

See this right here? I have no problem with "economic empire" or other such modified versions. I think the difference is that you don't see a difference between political (re: enforced) control, and economic "control." I see a world of difference - depending on the level of economic "control."

Is it picking nits to point out that it's actually NATO, under the auspices of the UN, that runs Afghanistan?

Forgive me if I don't get into some of the aspects given the degeneration of the discussion from both sides. But thanks for the attempt at answering some of my questions.

1) This is a country that is only a few hundred years old, made up entirely of immigrants (aside from Native American Indians who were here thousands of years ago).

2) This is a country that when it was just an itsy bitsy colony decided they didn't like the rule of the then currently governing country and basically said "screw you".  Taking a few bits and pieces of government they like, they came up with something rather different than anything else currently in play.  They overthrew the government and put into play this new system.

3) They went on to expunge any debts they had with other countries and several of those countries temporarily wound up in debt to the US until the US expunged such records.

4) This is a country that set a certain bar (for good or ill).  The vast majority of other countries compare their military, their money, their healthcare, etc. to the USA.  If their money is worth more against the dollar they feel they are doing well, if their healthcare is considered better than the United States, they are doing well.  It isn't so much that the USA is best at everything, but for the longest time in the last few centuries it quickly became the standard for measurement of prosperity and how well-off a country is in many areas.

5) This is a country that stepped in during two World Wars and from overseas managed to do quite a lot.  WWI seriously increased US economic power, including lots of loans to the Allied Powers.  WWII setup the US as a major world player and a lot of advances that the USA got the benefit of...  of course, the USA didn't stop at WWII and other conflicts did not go as smoothly (Vietnam for example) and several more recent incursions where the USA has "stepped in" to work with other countries ... Yeah, the USA has a rep as a "buttinksy" but it was a rep developed by other countries originally asking the USA to step in numerous times.

6) This is a country that has people with radically different ethnic/cultural/philosophical/religious backgrounds and beliefs living and working in the same community.  More so than any other country in the world... Many of these different belief systems have often led to war between groups in other parts of the world; and though it has at many times led to violence in the USA, it has only once led to the kind of warfare seen in so many other countries hosting these same belief systems (the US Civil War).

7) This is a country that loves to liberally "borrow" from any other culture that has an impact on it.  I find it funny when my fellow US Citizens make fun of other cultures and then it has to be pointed out that we begged, borrowed and stole about a half a zillion ideas from them and incorporated them into the melting pot of US culture.  We have the hardest language in the world to learn because every rule has about a million exceptions, but almost every culture on Earth can find a few words of American English that they know and identify with.  This is a big part of our freedom here, we liberally take the best of what we find from every other culture, country and religion on Earth and incorporate it into our own melting pot; there is no restrictions against it, nothing that says if we do this we will burn, go to a bad place, or that it is illegal to do so.

The USA has, like it or not, done a whole lot in a relatively short period of time (the regions of Canada and the USA as civilized cultures have the shortest history on Earth, along with Australia I believe).  Some of it probably was pure luck, some of it was the same attitude that was called on to assist other countries early in the 20th century and that may have given a lot of us "Americans" a rather big head certainly.

So the USA is a young upstart, a rebel, an "indie" if you will (not trying to start that thread into here, just the statement seems to fit), so yes there are those Americans who take their national sense of pride to heights residents of other countries tend to think is more than a little nuts.  

Personally, I'm an "American" and pretty darn proud of that.  I love the fact that the majority of my fellow citizens get the concept of seeing greatness in other places around the world and accepting that into our own unique culture.  I love the fact that my neighbor and I can have completely different worldviews and yet I'm not worried about him declaring war on me tomorrow or blowing up my house one day this week in the name of a belief that is simply different from mine.  I'm not especially proud of the fact that my country butts in everywhere it can, especially when it is asked not to do so (I get why we do it, I just don't think we go about it the best way possible perhaps, and we could use to be a little less "slick" in our approach).  I'm not thrilled that USA pride sometimes goes WAY overboard, or that we can't decide whether or not we like immigration and that we often forget that we all came from somewhere else, and that a piece of that exists within who we are even today.
 
So I'm as proud to be an American as I hope every Swedish, Dutch, British, German, French, Australian, Canadian, Turkish, New Zealander, Armenian, Columbian, Peruvian, Czech, Egyptian, Grecian, Haitian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Lebanese, Macedonian, Ethiopian, Estonian, Moroccan, Micronesian, Nigerian, Romanian, Swiss, Zambian and more (hope I spelled them all at least close to correct) are of their own countries.  We ain't no better, but we ain't no worse!