People often claim that Afghanistan is the “graveyard of empires”, and they are absolutely right! Ghengis Khan, Tamerlane, and Alexander the Great all fell to the sun-hardened warriors in the Afghanistan mountains. However,most people pay too much attention to the “graveyard” part, and not enough to the “empire” part. To say that we may meet the same fate as Alexander the Great admits that the “empire” part of that phrase must also apply to the United States. I am not going to comment on whether the United States is or is not an empire, with all the nastiness that word implies, but stop using the phrase if you don’t think the US is an empire.