How about calling the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Benevolent Hegemon's interminable shock-and-awe campaigns (q.v., the March to the Sea, the Trail of Tears, the Phillipines, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Panama, Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on and so forth, ad nauseam) "collateral damage"? That's a construct, too, no?

What's that? Oh, that's right, sorry. Those aforementioned culture-of-death episodes don't count. God anointed America globocop (it's right there in the Book of Romans, in the unlucky 13th Chapter), after all, and we all know when you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs. As the great Joseph Sobran put it, in his own inimitable way, "Americans who want their country to behave like other countries are called 'isolationists'; other countries that behave like America are called 'rogue nations.' "

Wait a minute! Isn't there something about universality being the hallmark of Christian morality? Would any nation besides the U.S. be granted a free pass to wreak all this death and destruction in the name of uplift? Well, any other nation would be if it were blessed with such forward-thinking, well-intentioned and humanitarian leaders as "Honest" Abe Lincoln, Woodward "War to End All Wars" Wilson, "Uncle Joe" Stalin-lover FDR, "Hiroshima Harry" Truman, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. This is where my straining moral equivalence falls to the ground.