Incompetent? No way. The US Government is the biggest, best bully in the game. They have perfected it to a new degree.

Incompetent because Snowden isn't on the plane.

Unless they only wanted to show the extent of their power over other nations. A strong signal, I might add. It could also be in the interests of US government to see which countries they control fully, and which put up a fight.

I don't think so. To some of those countries the US is already 'the boy who cried wolf'.

If anything it will motivate latin american nations to work together on the issue. If they act together for Snowdon's safety, it's much harder for the US to bully any single nation that accepts him.

or the death-throes of a crumbling empire.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on where you stand, America's power is rapidly growing stronger, because they will soon be a net exporter of oil and a myriad of other reasons. It is more realistic to fix its problems than wish it were going away

And what possible plan of attack is there for fixing its problems? Voting clearly doesn't work. Violent revolution has about a 0.0000000001% chance of success (if I'm extremely generous). If you could get hundreds of thousands of the right people flooding all aspects of US politics you might have a chance, but that probably has worse odds than a revolution. I can't imagine any possible way to fix the US now.

All we can hope is that they will keep acting insane until the rest of the world simply unplugs from them. We can't stop their power but they can become the "North Korea" continent that we all shake our heads over but realize there's nothing that can be done that would be worth what it would cost.

The US is growing weaker, (and that is not a good thing), I don't see how it will ever export oil, its economy is a disaster, the hole in its public treasury is legendary, etc.

Meanwhile China is growing like weeds.

The problem with the US is that is does not have a credible peer, it could have been China but they are about to pop their real estate bubble and the EU is not as strong as it should be, so who is on par?