While experts may argue that military interventionism is in fact America's default setting - one may add: only setting, I believe Washington's new military endeavour to be quite different in nature; if only by the sheer fact that the US needs a war to salvage its political relevance and hegemonic projection.
Whatever do I mean?
Before I really get into the matter at hand allow me to frame America's new military push within those new geopolitical dynamics Iran, Russia and one determined Syria managed to manifest in the Greater Levant. Whether we care to admit or not, Aleppo's liberation changed everything.
Daesh's defeat and Turkey's subsequent admission of defeat in carving an empire for itself on the back of Syria's demise tore a hole in America's Empire of such magnitude that Washington became irrelevant to the Levant almost overnight.
Syria's victory against Terror was really America's defeat before the Axis of Resistance. Let's learn to use this term in a positive fashion shall we! Resistance when exercised against tyranny should be celebrated not frowned upon.
Resistance we would do well to remember is a natural night, no man, power or political construct can ever take away since weaved within the very fabric of our human condition. I believe here History offers many great lessons in Resistance ...
Understand this, with the liberation of Aleppo, Syria manifested a profound geopolitical shift, in that the region learnt to broker peace and sit itself sovereign against invaders, away from US tutelage. Given the fact Washington's shadow has blotted the sun of Arabia for great many decades, such "rebellion" is indeed groundbreaking. Needless to say that America did not take such offence lightly ... empires will be empires, and empires do not usually allow for their vassals to simply walk away.
Maybe now you will look upon President Trump's sudden taste for war as an expression of America's bruised imperial ego - and most certainly a desperate attempt to remain relevant in a fast-moving fast-changing geopolitical theater.
Rome is burning ladies and gentlemen! Rome has been on fire for quite some time actually - it only needs now to wake up to it.
America one may argue, is wired for war - intrinsically belligerent and absolutely exceptional, the so-called Land of the Free has acted a tyrannical power one too many times for any of us to care to count. YES America today sits an imperial by definition and war has been its favourite national sport.
In an oped for RT Robert Bridge made some very interesting observations. He wrote: "Watching Washington attack one sovereign state after another since the collapse of the Soviet Union prompts the question: Are we Americans behaving out of some inherent aggression, or is this just old-fashioned empire building by a global superpower?"
For those of you still under the impression the United States is a force for good in the world, allow me to share a few statistics. Micah Zenko, a member of the influential Council on Foreign Relations, reported that in President Obama's last year in office, the US military "dropped 26,171 bombs in seven countries." Zenko explains, however, that estimate is "undoubtedly low, considering reliable data is only available for airstrikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya, and a single 'strike,' according to the Pentagon's definition, can involve multiple bombs or munitions."
Now that we establish that, let me go back to Washington's latest military fit in the Middle East.
The one president to end all wars - Donald Trump, has already signed off on one grand butchery in Yemen while planning another in Syria, all in the name of course of counter-terrorism.
Are we still drinking the coolaid? I certainly hope not, for at this stage one would need to be be drowned in it to believe the web of lies, misinformation, and other platitudes US officials have screamed from behind their teleprompters.
Mr Trump is not fighting terrorism ... not in Yemen, not in Syria, not anywhere. If America was fighting the abomination that is Daesh and Co., America would need to audit itself out of the Terror equation and issue one massive Mea Culpa.
Trump's new war is being fought so that a dying empire could make it through the night - that and the fact that it was called upon to salvage Saudi Arabia's hegemonic debacle.
Here is where I believe things get interesting! What if America's empire was in fact in the hands of another entirely? What if Washington was following not its best interests but its leadership's best financial interests? Finally what if America's imperial complex was owned by another power ... one which seat was in Saudi Arabia, where money grows not on trees but is streamed out of the belly of the earth?
Let's consider the possibility - even for a second, that America does not own itself anymore.
If you paid attention Donald Trump's decision to approve the sale of weapons to the grand Wahhabist kingdom comes right around the same time the US military was told to play destabilisation in Syria and Yemen. I personally don't believe in coincidences - especially when it comes to politics, even less so when Riyadh has something to gain from muddying the waters.
As of right now both the US and the KSA are in a world of pain, and both are quite desperate to salvage their Middle Eastern agenda, if anything, not to have to answer some really hard questions as to their dealings with Terror.
But here's the thing: as empires die, new powers rise ...
Catherine Shakdam is the Director of Programs of the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies and a political analyst specializing in radical movements, exclusively for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook".
Comment: America may not own itself, but the American people do not steer its direction anyway. The U.S. empire is far beyond the powers of any sitting president, and its interests have little to do with a nation-state. This modern empire thrives on the destruction and subjugation of other nations and Trump cannot change that. He may do some positive things, and he may even try to work on some fundamental changes. But America's course is strongly set and the outcome will not be pretty.