One of the little-told subplots to this country's crazy march toward war with Iraq is the clear ambition that a group of White House insiders -- the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz -- have expressed for U.S. world domination.

Coming together in 1997 with a formal name -- the Project for the New American Century -- this group and a half dozen others have fanned a vision of the U.S. rising beyond its status as Only Superpower to a new identity, what I'd call Ruler of the World.

While it might be argued that U.S. domination of world civilization is nothing new, the vision of this group goes beyond overwhelming domination to direct control.

The administration gave an astonishingly unembarrassed description of these ambitions last September, when it released its first National Security Strategy. The 31-page document, as described in a Christian Science Monitor report, asserts American dominance as the lone superpower -- a status no rival power will be allowed to challenge."

You may recall from that time a bit of public eyebrow-raising over a new American stance in international affairs: that we would henceforth allow ourselves to engage in preemptive strikes wherever we see our security threatened. That idea came out of the same document.

The position paper styles all this as a good thing, actually. American dominance, it says, will improve the quality of life worldwide, as the U.S. exerts its might "in the service of a balance of power that favors freedom."

To me, this is an alarming, even terrifying, prospect, as is the mentality behind it: an America-first, security-fixated attitude that has no grasp that other cultures not only don't need our protection and values, they don't want them.

The agenda of this group -- which, by the way, is no secret and has been widely though not prominently reported -- does help explain something. One of the mystifying features of the Bush administration's march toward war has been its resoluteness. The president and his advisers have made it clear they really don't want anything standing between them and the crushing of Saddam Hussein. Rationale after rationale for commencing with this mission has, however, fallen in the face of U. N. weapons-inspections results and international opposition. Why is the administration in such a rush to squash a fifth-rate dictator who had nothing, as far as anyone can tell, to do with the Sept. 11 attacks that set off our "war on terrorism" in the first place?

Seen in the light of this group's world-power ambitions, the march toward war begins to make sense, however. The point isn't to have a rationale, such as disarmament; the point is to have a war. And that war, in turn, is merely the first step in setting this vision of American world domination -- it's being called an "American imperium" -- in motion.

I can think of few things more scary than what this group is up to. As much as nobody needs or wants Saddam Hussein, at the very least our launching a war against another sovereign nation is politically immoral. It flies in the face of a long-standing national expectation that our wars be undertaken in self-defense and as a last resort.

But beyond morality, embarking on this project threatens to undo us as nation. While it's wrapped itself in a cloak of patriotism and security, it is in reality profoundly un-American.

Here's why: Right off the top, we would lose our standing in the community of nations. They would instead fear and resent us. Our fixation on war has already cost us much of the charity and goodwill we experienced after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Worse, we would lose a lot of lives. The kind of conquest and control these guys are envisioning would put a lot more Americans at risk, both in military and civilian capacities, than any of us can imagine. Even if we engage in the remote-control, high-tech warfare we've come to rely on, the more soldiers we have out there, the more soldiers who would die.

When I say "we" I don't just mean Americans. Casualties on the "other side" would have to be staggering.

And if we think our exposure to terror is unacceptably high now, just take a peek at what life is like in Israel to get a small picture of what kind of life Bush is leading us toward. Once we cast our authority wide enough to control nations and populations that resent us deeply, how would we control rebellion and terrorism within our own newly drawn sphere of influence?

In the end, though, the greatest risk would be to ourselves, to what we are as a nation. The military, logistical, and political imperatives of world control -- and the unavoidable, accompanying need for homeland security -- would demand a government that can act swiftly and decisively. There would be little room or time for discussion and debate.

And a nation with little room or time for debate has stopped making room for democracy.

I'm assuming that, by that point, bin Laden would be dead, one way or another.

And he'll be rolling over in his grave -- laughing.

Malcolm McBryde is Kalamazoo Gazette's Family section editor. He can be reached at mmcbryde@kalamazoogazette.com or 388-8574.