Is the United States--as so many have said, in celebration or dismay--a planet-mastering empire or not? The question presses upon us as George W. Bush gets ready to descend upon New York for the Republican convention, as he once descended upon the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln under the banner declaring "mission accomplished" in Iraq.

Just as the President's landing on the Lincoln invited an assessment of the Iraq war, so now his visit to New York invites assessment of the larger, global mission of the Administration. (And, come to think of it, Manhattan island, with its slim uptown and its broad-beamed downtown, is shaped rather like a gargantuan aircraft carrier.) The decision to hold the convention in New York City was apparently conceived as a triumphal return by the nation's savior to the scene of September 11. But the recent fortunes of the United States have been anything but triumphal. The President's policies have failed to check the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The entire "axis of evil," consisting, according to the President, of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, continues to defy his Administration in one way or another. In Iraq, the Marines are now at war with the Shiite community the United States supposedly came to save. North Korea has allegedly become a nuclear power, and Iran seems to be heading that way. The traditional alliances of the United States have been shaken. After 9/11, editorialists asked, "Why do they hate us?" Whatever the reasons, "they" have multiplied to include most of the world.

In the face of so much failure, I wrote recently to my book editor and friend Tom Engelhardt, America's title to global empire seems at the very least in question. (This column does double duty as the third in an exchange of letters on the subject between me and Engelhardt at his superb website, tomdispatch.com, sponsored by the Nation Institute. The earlier letters can be read at the website under the August 2004 posts.) Engelhardt responded with an eloquent list of America's imperial assets, including, among other items, its 700-plus military bases, its supine Congress, its nearly half-trillion-dollar military establishment, its division of earth into five military commands, its ambition to dominate space and its militarized political parties.

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