Parenti:

“I’m not one of those critics that believes U.S. foreign policy is confused, or stupid, or misinformed, or well-intentioned but it goes awry. I think it’s a brilliant policy filled with many brilliant, terrible, horrible victories.” In order to further the interests of the super-rich, destruction is imposed when it “systematically undermines any movement, any country, any leadership, any popular group that tries an alternative way of self-defining, self-developing, using the resources, the markets, the labor of their society for their own needs, rather than for a multi-corporate global system, a neo-liberal system, which seems to be the goal of this reactionary clique in office today.

Yes, USians are delusional, the empire is now slowly falling and the contradictions are mounting so high it's staggering how they are still not obvious to some people. But the core problem is to think in terms of nation states instead of classes. The nation can in principle lose an imperialist war, while it's ruling class is still winning the class war. That's what happened in all the previous wars and It's still to early to call for the current one.

The idea of the "inept empire" is liberal propaganda

There’s a very popular theory of politics that sees the destruction and misery wrought by regimes like the Wars on Terror and Drugs, compares the professed motives with the outcomes, and concludes that those in power are some combination of utterly incompetent, shortsighted, and ignorant of how to build a decent world.

From "The mainstream and the margins: Noam Chomsky vs. Michael Parenti", which links to many of Parentis articles and interviews criticizing this idea.

For example: The Iraq War Is a Smashing Success, by Michael Parenti

The US invasion was not quick, easy, or dearly welcomed by Iraqis, but it “destroyed a country that had the audacity to retain control of its own oil supply, kept its entire economy under state control, did not invite the IMF or the giant transnational corporations in [and] charted an independent course. So he and his country have been correctly destroyed in keeping with the interests of the US-led global empire.”

On Afghanistan:

The same is true in Afghanistan. When an interviewer asked Parenti how Afghanistan could be seen as a success rather than a quagmire, Parenti responded that “They are going to lose Afghanistan, but they do succeed, they succeeded in stopping the betterment of the masses of people.” Parenti explains that “When the productive social capital of any part of the world is obliterated, the potential value of private capital elsewhere is enhanced — especially when the crisis faced today by western capitalism is one of overcapacity.”

On Yugoslavia:

Thus, “To destroy publicly-run Yugoslav factories that produced auto parts, appliances, or fertilizer—or a publicly financed Sudanese plant that produced pharmaceuticals at prices substantially below their western competitors—is to enhance the investment value of western producers.” In concrete terms, this happened in Yugoslavia when NATO bombed the state-owned DIN tobacco company and the local Zastava motor works for the sake of Phillip Morris and Ford; Greg Elich recounts how DIN was rebuilt and “made fit for privatization by a new Western-friendly government, as 1,400 employees were thrown out of work. In October 2003, DIN was purchased by Philip Morris, which six years later eliminated a third of the remaining workforce.”

In general:

“The national policies of an imperialist country reflect the interests of that country’s dominant class,” argues Parenti in “Costs of Empire and Role of IMF”: Class, rather than nation-state, is often the crucial unit of analysis for studying imperialism. And if you understand that then you will avoid the mistake of a lot of liberal writers who say ’empire doesn’t make sense, it costs too much! It’s irrational.’ It’s been pointed out that from 1950 to 1970, the US government gave the Philippines $3 billion in aid when the US has only a billion dollars of investments in the Philippines. ‘See, it’s irrational, it costs more than what we’re getting back!’ That’s the liberal view. Now, if you think with Marx, if you think in terms of class, you understand that that is not irrational at all, because the people who are paying the 3 billion are not the same as the people who are making the 1 billion investment. The people who are paying the 3 billion are us. And the people who are making the 1 billion are Exxon and ITT and IBM and General Dynamics and General Motors and General Electric and all the other Generals! And they’ll spend 3 dollars of your money to protect 1 dollar of their money. They’ll spend 4 dollars of your money, 5 dollars, 6 dollars—in fact, when it comes to protecting their money, your money is no object!

As Parenti and Gowans point out, this is because the Inept Empire theory is a liberal one, premised on a nation-based reading of society rather than a socialist, class-based one. As such, the liberal theory creates an artificial sense of identification between the different classes of a nation, whitewashing the class antagonisms that would motivate upheavals for a more equitable system. Even a relatively clear-eyed critic of Empire must believe good faith-motivation on the part of our rulers—at worst, they must be incompetent, rather than evil.

The capitalist ruling class is still winning. The current moment and the sacrifices of the resistance offer a chance for communists, but we still have to take it and use it.