Next we'll buy the entire planet of Mars from the Native Martians for one lousy bead.

"The moon belongs to America, and anxiously awaits the arrival of our astro-men."
--The Simpsons, "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson"

My brother alerted me to this: on the Diane Rehm show today, she had on General Wesley Clark and Peter Rodman, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs and currently Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Near the very end, starting a little after 49 minutes into the audio they have up, there was the following exchange between Ms. Rehm and (I think) General Clark:

Rehm: And finally... General, in a Washington Post op-ed this past Sunday you wrote, "The next war is always looming." Explain what you mean.

Clark: I think when you're in the military you have an obligation to not only learn the lessons from the past but to think about the future. And so, as we think about the future in the United States armed forces, we're looking of course at the lessons learned from Iraq ground troops. We're looking at the possible requirements to go against Iran, air and naval power, and we're looking at the need to protect our domination of space.

Rehm: ...space.

Clark: Space. The ultimate high ground. It belongs to us.

Uh, yeah. Looks like manifest destiny isn't dead yet--it's just changed targets.