Replete with cowboy hat, Dick Cheney went to the Coast Guard Academy on Wednesday to give the commencement address.

With understatement, he said, “It’s rare for an Academy class to begin during a war, and then graduate during the same war.”

Let’s see. The Iraq War and the Afghan War have both lasted longer than the Civil War and World War I and World War II.

But Cheney tried to cheer up the graduates by saying “it does not have to go on forever,” adding, “We will overcome the ideologies of hate by spreading human liberty, self-government, tolerance, mercy, and the dignity of every human life.”

All things that Cheney and Bush are so famous for.

At least Cheney thinks so. “We can take heart,” he said, “because American power is being used to serve American ideals.”

Which ideals are those? Domination? Control of Resources? Profit? Empire?

If you don’t think it’s empire, how do you make sense of Cheney’s additional statement that “the Coast Guard is also vital to America’s mission in Southwest Asia.” He praised the Coast Guard for “providing port security, on-and-off loading of military hardware, and patrol forces to secure assets in the Persian Gulf.”

The Coast Guard? In the Persian Gulf?

What coast of ours is over there?

But remember: It wasn’t Cheney and Bush that made the Persian Gulf U.S. property. It was Jimmy Carter, with his Carter Doctrine.

Empire, you see, is a bipartisan business.