"America is very famous. They control the world."

To hear these comments from a citizen of Vietnam or Iraq might give me pause. To hear them from an Englishman is laughable. American attitudes towards the world are vastly less patronizing than what was inbred in English colonialism. The 'white man's burden' is an English concept, and resulted in the humiliation and subjugation of populations and resources everywhere the sun shone. It's withered empire drew and misdrew the maps of the world leading to much of the civil strife and sectarian violence which dominates today's geopolitical landscape--everything from Idi Amin to Israel.

Just because Britain has a colonial past is no reason to excuse or ignore America's present attitude to the rest of the world and the widespread perception, from outside the US, that American citizens believe that other countries owe them a debt of gratitude and unquestioning loyalty for what they do to and in other countries in the name of 'democracy' and the 'war on terror'.

One would have thought that America would have learned from the mistakes of Britain's colonial ventures but, no, they are just as patronising, arrogant and misguided in their attitude to the rest of the world as British colonialism was in the 18th and 19th centuries.