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The Empire v. The Graveyard
Whistling Past the Afghan Graveyard, Where Empires Go To Die
It is now a commonplace -- as a lead article in the New York Times's Week in Review pointed out recently -- that Afghanistan is "the graveyard of empires." Given Barack Obama's call for a greater focus on the Afghan War ("we took our eye off the ball when we invaded Iraq..."), and given indications that a "surge" of U.S. troops is about to get underway there, Afghanistan's dangers have been much in the news lately. Some of the writing on this subject, including recent essays by Juan Cole at Salon.com, Robert Dreyfuss at the Nation, and John Robertson at the War in Context website, has been incisive on just how the new administration's policy initiatives might transform Afghanistan and the increasingly unhinged Pakistani tribal borderlands into "Obama's War."
In other words, "the graveyard" has been getting its due. Far less attention has been paid to the "empire" part of the equation. And there's a good reason for that -- at least in Washington. Despite escalating worries about the deteriorating situation, no one in our nation's capital is ready to believe that Afghanistan could actually be the "graveyard" for the American role as the dominant hegemon on this planet.
In truth, to give "empire" its due you would have to start with a reassessment of how the Cold War ended. In 1989, which now seems centuries ago, the Berlin Wall came down; in 1991, to the amazement of the U.S. intelligence community, influential pundits, inside-the-Beltway think-tankers, and Washington's politicians, the Soviet Union, that "evil empire," that colossus of repression, that mortal enemy through nearly half a century of threatened nuclear MADness -- as in "mutually assured destruction" -- simply evaporated, almost without violence. (Soviet troops, camped out in the relatively cushy outposts of Eastern Europe, especially the former East Germany, were in no more hurry to come home to the economic misery of a collapsed empire than U.S. troops stationed in Okinawa, Japan, are likely to be in the future.)
In Washington where, in 1991, everything was visibly still standing, a stunned silence and a certain unwillingness to believe that the enemy of almost half a century was no more would quickly be overtaken by a sense of triumphalism. A multigenerational struggle had ended with only one of its super-participants still on its feet.
The conclusion seemed too obvious to belabor. Right before our eyes, the USSR had miraculously disappeared into the dustbin of history with only a desperate, impoverished Russia, shorn of its "near abroad," to replace it; ergo, we were the victors; we were, as everyone began to say with relish, the planet's "sole superpower." Huzzah!
Masters of the Universe
The Greeks, of course, had a word for it: "hubris." The ancient Greek playwrights would have assumed that we were in for a fall from the heights. But that thought crossed few minds in Washington (or on Wall Street) in those years.
Instead, our political and financial movers and shakers began to act as if the planet were truly ours (and other powers, including the Europeans and the Japanese, sometimes seemed to agree). To suggest at the time, as the odd scholar of imperial decline did, that there might have been no winners and two losers in the Cold War, that the weaker superpower had simply left the scene first, while the stronger, less hollowed out superpower was inching its way toward the same exit, was to speak to the deaf.
In the 1990s, "globalization" -- the worldwide spread of the Golden Arches, the Swoosh, and Mickey Mouse -- was on all lips in Washington, while the men who ran Wall Street were regularly referred to, and came to refer to themselves, as "masters of the universe."
The phrase was originally used by Tom Wolfe. It was the brand name of the superhero action figures his protagonist's daughter plays with in his 1987 novel Bonfire of the Vanities. ("On Wall Street he and a few others -- how many? three hundred, four hundred, five hundred? had become precisely that... Masters of the Universe...") As a result, the label initially had something of Wolfe's cheekiness about it. In the post-Cold War world, however, it soon enough became purely self-congratulatory.
In those years, when the economies of other countries suddenly cratered, Washington sent in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to "discipline" them. That was the actual term of tradecraft. To the immense pain of whole societies, the IMF regularly used local or regional disaster to pry open countries to the deregulatory wonders of "the Washington consensus." (Just imagine how Americans would react if, today, the IMF arrived at our battered doors with a similar menu of must-dos!)
Now, as the planet totters financially, while from Germany to Russia
and China, world leaders blame the Bush administration's deregulatory
blindness and Wall Street's derivative shenanigans for the financial
hollowing out of the global economy, it's far more apparent that those
titans of finance were actually masters of a flim-flam universe.
Retrospectively, it's clearer that, in those post-Cold War years, Wall
Street was already heading for the exits, that it was less a planetary
economic tiger than a monstrously lucrative paper tiger. Someday, it
might be a commonplace to say the same of Washington.
Almost twenty years later, in fact, it may finally be growing more acceptable to suggest that certain comparisons between the two Cold War superpowers were apt. As David Leonhardt of the New York Times pointed out recently:
"Richard Freeman, a Harvard economist, argues that the U.S. bubble economy had something in common with the old Soviet economy. The Soviet Union's growth was artificially raised by huge industrial output that ended up having little use. America's was artificially raised by mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations and even the occasional Ponzi scheme."
Today, when it comes to Wall Street, you can feel the anger rising on Main Street as Americans grasp that those supposed masters of the universe actually hollowed out their world and brought immense suffering down on them. They understand what those former masters of financial firms, who handed out $18.4 billion in bonuses to their employees at the end of 2008, clearly don't. John Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch, for instance, still continues to defend his purchase of a $35,000 antique commode for his office, as well as the $4 billion in bonuses he dealt out to the mini-masters under him in a quarter in which his group racked up more than $15 billion in losses, in a year in which his firm's losses reached $27 billion.
At least now, however, no one -- except perhaps Thain himself -- would mistake the Thains for masters rather than charlatans, or the U.S. for a financial superpower riding high rather than a hollowed out economic powerhouse laid low.
As it happens, however, there was another set of all-American "masters of the universe," even if never given that label. I'm speaking of the top officials of our national security state, the key players in foreign and military policy. They, too, came to believe that the planet was their oyster. They came to believe as well that, uniquely in the history of empires, global domination might be theirs. They began to dream that they might oversee a new Rome or imperial Great Britain, but of a kind never before encountered, and that the competitive Great Game played by previous rivalrous Great Powers had been reduced to solitaire.
For them, the very idea that the U.S. might be the other loser in the Cold War was beyond the pale. And that was hardly surprising. Ahead of them, after all, they thought they saw clear sailing, not graveyards. Hence, Afghanistan.
Twice in the Same Graveyard
It's here, of course, that things get eerie. I mean, not just a graveyard, but the same two superpowers and the very same graveyard. In November 2001, knowing intimately what had happened to the USSR in Afghanistan, the Bush administration invaded anyway -- and with a clear intent to build bases, occupy the country, and install a government of its choice.
When it comes to the neocon architects of global Bushism, hubris remains a weak word. Breathless at the thought of the supposed power of the U.S. military to crush anything in its path, they were blind to other power realities and to history. They equated power with the power to destroy.
Believing that the military force at their bidding was nothing short of invincible, and that whatever had happened to the Soviets couldn't possibly happen to them, they launched their invasion. They came, they saw, they conquered, they celebrated, they settled in, and then they invaded again -- this time in Iraq. A trillion dollars in wasted taxpayer funds later, we look a lot more like the Russians.
What made this whole process so remarkable was that there was no other superpower to ambush them in Afghanistan, as the U.S. had once done to the Soviet Union. George W. Bush's crew, it turned out, didn't need another superpower, not when they were perfectly capable of driving themselves off that Afghan cliff and into the graveyard below with no more help than Osama bin Laden could muster.
They promoted a convenient all-purpose fantasy explanation for their global actions, but also gave in to it, and it has yet to be dispelled, even now that the American economy has gone over its own cliff. Under the rubric of the Global War on Terror, they insisted that the greatest danger to the planet's "sole superpower" came from a ragtag group of fanatics backed by the relatively modest moneys a rich Saudi could get his hands on. Indeed, while the Bush administration paid no attention whatsoever, bin Laden had launched a devastating and televisually spectacular set of assaults on major American landmarks of power -- financial, military, and (except for the crash of Flight 93 in a field in Pennsylvania) political. Keep in mind, however, that those attacks had been launched as much from Hamburg and Florida as from the Afghan backlands.
Given the history of the graveyard, Americans should probably have locked their plane doors, put in some reasonable protections domestically, and taken their time going after bin Laden. Al-Qaeda was certainly capable of doing real harm every couple of years, but their strength remained minimal, their "caliphate" a joke, and Afghanistan -- for anyone but Afghans -- truly represented the backlands of the planet. Even now, we could undoubtedly go home and, disastrous as the situation there (and in Pakistan) has become under our ministrations, do less harm than we're going to do with our prospective surges in the years to come.
The irony is that, had they not been so blinded by triumphalism, Bush's people really wouldn't have needed to know much to avoid catastrophe. This wasn't atomic science or brain surgery. They needn't have been experts on Central Asia, or mastered Pashto or Dari, or recalled the history of the anti-Soviet War that had ended barely a decade earlier, or even read the prophetic November 2001 essay in Foreign Affairs magazine, "Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires," by former CIA station chief in Pakistan Michael Bearden, which concluded: "The United States must proceed with caution -- or end up on the ash heap of Afghan history."
They could simply have visited a local Barnes & Noble, grabbed a paperback copy of George MacDonald Fraser's rollicking novel Flashman, and followed his blackguard of an anti-hero through England's disastrous Afghan War of 1839-1842 from which only one Englishman returned alive. In addition to a night's reading pleasure, that would have provided any neocon national security manager with all he needed to know when it came to getting in and out of Afghanistan fast.
Or subsequently, they could have spent a little time with the Russian ambassador to Kabul, a KGB veteran of the Soviet Union's Afghan catastrophe. He complained to John Burns of the New York Times last year that neither Americans nor NATO representatives were willing to listen to him, even though the U.S. had repeated "all of our mistakes," which he carefully enumerated. "Now," he added, "they're making mistakes of their own, ones for which we do not own the copyright."
True, the Obama crew at the White House, the National Security Council, the State Department, the Pentagon, and in the U.S. military, even holdovers like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Centcom Commander David Petraeus, are not the ones who got us into this. Yes, they are more realistic about the world. Yes, they believe -- and say so -- that we're, at best, in a stalemate in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that it's going to be truly tough sledding, that it probably will take years and years, and that the end result won't be victory. Yes, they want some "new thinking," some actual negotiations with factions of the Taliban, some kind of a grand regional bargain, and above all, they want to "lower expectations."
As Gates summed things up in congressional testimony recently:
"This is going to be a long slog, and frankly, my view is that we need to be very careful about the nature of the goals we set for ourselves in Afghanistan... If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose, because nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience and money."
Okay, in Norse mythology, Valhalla may be the great hall for dead warriors and the Secretary of Defense may have meant an "Asian Eden," but cut him a little slack: at least he acknowledged that there were financial limits to the American role in the world. That's a new note in official Washington, where global military and diplomatic policy have, until now, existed in splendid isolation from the economic meltdown sweeping the country and the planet.
Similarly, official Washington is increasingly willing to talk about a "multi-polar world," rather than the unipolar fantasy planet on which the first-term Bush presidency dwelled. Its denizens are even ready to imagine a relatively distant moment when the U.S. will have "reduced dominance," as Global Trends 2025, a futuristic report produced for the new President by the National Intelligence Council, put it. Or as Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community's "top analyst," suggested of the same moment:
"[T]he U.S. will remain the preeminent power, but that American dominance will be much diminished over this period of time... [T]he overwhelming dominance that the United States has enjoyed in the international system in military, political, economic, and arguably, cultural arenas is eroding and will erode at an accelerating pace with the partial exception of military."
Still, it's a long way from fretting about finances, while calling for more dollars for the Pentagon, to imagining that we already might be something less than the dominant hegemon on this planet, or that the urge to tame the backlands of Afghanistan, half a world from home, makes no sense at all. Not for us, not for the Afghans, not for anybody (except maybe al-Qaeda).
For all their differences with Bush's first-term neocons, here's what the Obama team still has in common with them -- and it's no small thing: they still think the U.S. won the Cold War. They still haven't accepted that they can't, even if in a subtler fashion than the Busheviks, control how this world spins; they still can't imagine that the United States of America, as an imperial power, could possibly be heading for the exits.
Whistling Past the Graveyard
Back in 1979, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, plotting to draw the Soviets into a quagmire in Afghanistan, wrote President Jimmy Carter: "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War."
In fact, the CIA-backed anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan that lasted through the 1980s would give the Soviets far worse. After all, while the Vietnam War was a defeat for the U.S., it was by no means a bankrupting one.
In 1986, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev vividly described the Afghan War as a "bleeding wound." Three years later, by which time it had long been obvious that transfusions were hopeless, the Soviets withdrew. It turned out, however, that the bleeding still couldn't be staunched, and so the Soviet Union, with its sclerotic economy collapsing and "people power" rising on its peripheries, went down the tubes.
Hand it to the Bush administration, in the last seven-plus years the U.S. has essentially inflicted a version of the Soviets' "Afghanistan" on itself. Now the Obama team is attempting to remedy this disaster, but what new thinking there is remains, as far as we can tell, essentially tactical. Whether the new team's plans are more or less "successful" in Afghanistan and on the Pakistani border may, in the end, prove somewhat beside the point. The term Pyrrhic victory, meaning a triumph more costly than a loss, was made for just such moments.
After all, more than a trillion dollars later, with essentially nothing to show except an unbroken record of destruction, corruption, and an inability to build anything of value, the U.S. is only slowly drawing down its 140,000-plus troops in Iraq to a "mere" 40,000 or so, while surging yet more troops into Afghanistan to fight a counterinsurgency war, possibly for years to come. At the same time, the U.S. continues to expand its armed forces and to garrison the globe, even as it attempts to bail out an economy and banking system evidently at the edge of collapse. This is a sure-fire formula for further disaster -- unless the new administration took the unlikely decision to downsize the U.S. global mission in a major way.
Right now, Washington is whistling past the graveyard. In Afghanistan and Pakistan the question is no longer whether the U.S. is in command, but whether it can get out in time. If not, when the moment for a bailout comes, don't expect the other pressed powers of the planet to do for Washington what it has been willing to do for the John Thains of our world. The Europeans are already itching to get out of town. The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Indians... who exactly will ride to our rescue?
Perhaps it would be more prudent to stop hanging out in graveyards. They are, after all, meant for burials, not resurrections.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050. His other most recent book is The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books). Previous books include: The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
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63 Comments so far
Show AllIt is not a good sign that Kyrgyzstan has threatened to throw us out of the base in their country unless we pay them a lot more money. Russia is putting the pressure on Kyrgyzstan to do just that. That is a key base for us for the war in Afghanistan. With Russia offering over 2 billion in aid if they kick out the US, this may very well happen. Which will give Obama a huge challenge if he is looking to increase forces there in the "graveyard". Stay tuned all...
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My acne prevention site.
i've written some observation on this matter and a NEW reported development in central asia and former soviet republics.
but one would not necessarily say "it is not a good thing" that the USA is probably losing its military rights in kyrgystan...since what HAS the US empire REALLY done in this world anyway except -- to use the old, now classic and OBVIOUSLY TRUE remark by US GENERAL Smedley Butler :"The True Purpose of the US military is to make the world safe for capitalism and our economic and cultural assault...it has nothing to do with democracy or freedom and justice but to gather as much of the world's resources unto ourselves at the expense of other nations"?...
in short -- whatever ELSE the russians or soviets WERE, or other political or economic systems - before or after the USA "invaded" or interfered or - dominated as through its WorldBank, IMF, Washington consensus, Milton Friedman "shock capitalism doctrine" after natural and madmade "disasters" -
it has - DEMONSTRABLY NOT BEEN BENIGN but exploitative and hubristic. that much is clear now.
so one need NOT say "this is not a good thing".
if anything it IS a good thing since if there is ONE thing that has been the primary cause of militarism, arms race, endless provocations due to INTERFERENCES by a power thousands of miles away from its own borders (as opposed to russia ensuring her CENTURIES of traditions in her own neighborhood)
IT HAS BEEN THE USA ITSELF!
as the conservative writer Patrick Buchanan says:
"WE SHOULD get out of this empire business...and get out of those lands before they kick us out"...
and also:
"WE DIDN'T LIKE IT WHEN RUSSIA WAS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD in cuba......so ........what are WE doing in HER neighborhood?...if Putin complains about our trying to encircle russia right at her doorsteps -- doesn't HE have a POINT?"
not only buchanan but others have pointed out:
when USSR imploded due to ITS own weight and NOT because the USA "won" - and it was also accelerated BY gorbachev's internal reforms but which Gorbachev until TODAY insists he NEVER intended to be a dissolution of the USSR NOR did he ask for the USA and NATO to begin expanding RIGHT at russia's doorstep --
the USA/NATO/WESTERN EUROPE - in exchange for Russia DISSOLVING the "warsaw pact" to show in good faith that Russia had NO intention of invading europe or threatening it as the Cold War PROMOTED - as part of the USA dominance game in europe by casting russia as the Villain (which was ITSELF admitted by the cia and american leaders later was just an EXAGGERATION "for the US PUBLIC CONSUMPTION") --
promised in kind NEVER to make any moves to threaten russia ALSO and NEVER to expand towards russian borders...
INSTEAD what did the US triumphalism DO ?
they did EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE -- humiliated Russia by casting Serbia as the villain -- as if the Croats and albanians THEMSELVES ALSO were not committing warcrimes against serbia (there is also a side story to the "ethnic albanians" in serbia province that was bombed by NATO -- where these albanians actually were INTERLOPERS INTO serbia FROM albania because of another long fantasy by Albania for a "greater albania empire" by stealing land from serbia) --
and then bombed serbia to smithereens while russia - a centuries old ally and fellow "slav" of russians could only look on impotently ....as it was being "slapped in the face" by the USA .
doesn't it make sense that if there is ANY nation in the world that has poked its fingers in the pie everywhere in the globe and produced wars as a consequence -- and produced destruction of their economies to "gather as much of their resources unto ourselves" (such as IMF imposed cheap labor) --
it is NONE OTHER THAN THE UNITED STATES -- backed up by what General Butler said "OUR BIG MUSCLE doing the bidding of our BIG MONEY , BIG BANKS, BIG FINANCE?".
exactly which country has been the most exploitating and RAPINE of them all?
it is NONE OTHER THAN THE USA -- imposing what General Butler also identified as "OUR BIG BOSS.......whom we all serve....OUR SUPERNATIONALISTIC CAPITALISM".
the USA -- whatever other countriea and cultures are -- is the most RAPINE and exploitative, acquisitive and WARLIKE of them all.
i certainly also would not cry tears over the demise of this empire. if that is what it takes for it to BEGIN to behave like a nation worthy of its CLAIMS of honor and morality.
"i certainly also would not cry tears over the demise of this empire. if that is what it takes for it to BEGIN to behave like a nation worthy of its CLAIMS of honor and morality."
Yes and lets only cry tears of joy that we can finally live in a nation that is worthy of honor and morality.
What happens when snowflakes stick together?...............friends come together and have snow ball fights. :)
Leea
my question to you is :
WHY WOULD IT BE GOOD that the usa has a military presence THERE in a region it DOESN"T BELONG TO?
let us not have this "spreading democracy" nonsense. or that the russians and those governments are oppressive -- since the USA hasn't EXACTLY been a benign government ITSELF and has been shown to be FRAUD of "democracy" and even a FRAUD of ITS own championing of "capitalism".
but the main point is -- the USA HAS NO BUSINESS being in other region's and cultures' lands trying to militarily impose ITS presence.
americans love to talk to themselves - in their "angloprotestant" garb and their "christian nation" masquerade - about how "we have to have security to preserve OUR way of LIFE" and about how "foreigners" are going to THREATEN our way of life -- as an excuse to do WHAT?
to GO ABROAD , militarily, and otherwise
THREATENING the ways of lives of OTHER people and cultures and INVADING them -- as described by General Smedley Butler:
"FOR OUR ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL ASSAULT..........our US MILITARY's TRUE purpose is to be the BIG MUSCLE of our BIG MONEY and CAPITALISM ..I WAS ITS CHIEF ENFORCER".
"WE DIDN'T LIKE IT WHEN RUSSIA WAS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD.......SO WHAT ARE WE DOING IN RUSSIA'S NEIGHBORHOOD?.....
"WE SHOULD GET OUT OF THIS BUSINESS OF EMPIRE........AND GET OUT OF THOSE LANDS......BEFORE THEY KICK US OUT". ....PATRICK BUCHANAN.
in short:
the USA has NO RIGHT whatsoever to impose its will on the rest of the world.
as EVO MORALES of BOLIVIA said about the USA losing its military base in Bolivia and complaining about it.....
"well..........if the USA would allow US to install a Military Base in Florida --- .........".........
touche. isn't it?
I certainly would not mourn the end of US Empire, and so from that point I almost hope that Obama does throw what is left of the empire off the cliff in Afghanistan, but I am concerned about the innocent Afghanis who have already suffered far too much.
As for Obama's confused defense secretary, by "central Asian Valhalla" he probably meant a "central Asian Shangri-La," as opposed to a Himalayan Shangri-La (apparently a community in Nepal was the basis for the myths of Shangri-La). That is not the first time the man has been confused.
in afghanistan/pakistan and nearby provinces are spread for centuries a people called Pashtun - which has no concept or considers its IRRELEVANT - about these modern "borders" such as Afghanistan, pakistan, iran.....they are themselves about 40,000,000 people -- a true NATIOn in and of themselves - consisting of complex webs of tribes and communities with their unique culture and mores and habits (if i remember correctly among some of their lesser-known cultural mores is "marriage" between the same sex) and which mores go BEYOND their being muslims.
that alone shows that they have been able to absorb what they want and fit it to their preferences or needs as well as RESIST any dominance by outsiders should they not wish to absorb. taht is their right and prerogative -- for they after all ALSO comprise what is PROBABLY scientifically shown as the "true first ARYANS"...that are a civilization far, far far older than the europeans , however technologically backward they are in comparison.
and they know their land and they guard it jealously.
as Rudyard Kipling wrote upon seeing the burial of "british empire" in those lands --
he wrote for a symbolic epitaph on a soldier's graveyard:
"HERE LIES A MAN WHO TRIED TO HUSTLE THE EAST".
THE USA WANTS TO TRY? GO AHEAD...........AND see where that gets it.
True, true. It must have seemed outrageous, and a little bizarre, to the Pashtun tribe members that some interlopers from distant lands came in for a brief period and defined borders and determined whom they were to be grouped with.
what the Westerners do NOT understand is -- while there are modern borders of pakistan and afghanistan -- these are MERE INCONVENIENCES to the largely Pashtun "aryans" there...whose population spreads ACROSS the borders -- and if they REALLY wanted -- they could DESTROY pakistan and afghanistan as modern nations .
the USA doesn't understand what it has gotten itself into -- blinded by its own MYTH of "having won the Cold War" against russia .
if anything -- it is the RUSSIANS that understand ...and had THEY not been provoked by CIA inspired "terrorism" by teh Carter Administration -- it is LIKELY that they would NEVER have invaded or attempted to "pacify" that region south of their borders.......merely controlling the Soviet Republics was more than enough for their plates.
the USA THINKS it can dominate or maintain "lasting influence?"
they are DREAMING!
for NOT ONLY will the central asians and afghanis and pashtuns RESENT it - and FIGHT against it and be WILLING to die in ways americans will NEVER have the GUTS for if americans even IMAGINE to "hold on" to "conquered" lands or even ESTABLISH their "capitalism" (see where the USA business and establishments go if they even tried in an atmosphere of resentment against foreign control) -
Russia is NOT going to sit back and can just as easily use ITS influence and alliances with Iran and China to make life VERY VERY HELLISH for americans "over there, thousands of miles away"
until the USA BLEEDS ITSELF to death
right there in the 'graveyard of empires'.
the USA should be thankful russia and china and iran ARE NOT even being WORSE than merely , mainly , positioning a DETACHED attitude....until they see the USA "get too close for comfort" to their own borders...
and THEN you'll really see what QUAGMIRE is for the US EMPIRE
as "THE MAN THAT TRIED TO HUSTLE THE EAST".
americans have NO idea....they have NO idea...
I think the entire thing goes like this:
At the end of the fight
is the tombstone white
with the name of the late deceased
The Epitath drear
a fool lies here
who tried to hustle the east
---Rudyard Kipling
Well, depending on how you read it and what you know or understand about Valhalla, it might have been used correctly. I'm not sure, the misunderstanding may be on our side. I hope someone can clear this up as it seems very interesting.
Ok, kivals, I got off my lazy Ass and here is what I find out about Valhalla.
"Valhalla or Valholl was the death-realm of Hel, the Great Vala. Though it was taken over by new gods led by Father Odin, its archaic feminine name remained. Later myths made it a paradise reserved solely for warriors and war kings., members of the military caste who shared the opinions of Japanese samurai and Moslem "soldiers of Allah", that heavenly bliss belonged only to those who died fighting bravely."
From Barbara Walkers 'The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets'
What happens when snowflakes stick together?...............friends come together and have snow ball fights. :)
Leea
So, from your research, it does appear extremely unlikely that "Valhalla" was what Gates was trying to say. I still believe he was thinking of "Shangri-La."
With his enlarged fundamentalist christian and zionist judaism faith based committee members whispering in his ear, Obama may become the president who hands them their prayed for armageddon.
Won't they be surprised by the results if he does!
Well for they who want it, pray for it, armageddon may already have come.
What happens when snowflakes stick together?...............friends come together and have snow ball fights. :)
Leea
Don't live in a world you are not of for me, let forgiveness return us or set us all free.
What happens when snowflakes stick together?...............friends come together and have snow ball fights. :)
Leea
Good words, thanks ShadowDancer.
-- a greater focus on the Afghan War --
I disagree with this wording. Afghanistan is merely a part of the 'global war on terror', not a war of its own.
That's why the President called the place the central front in the war on terror, and why the military awards an 'Afghan Campaign' medal and a 'Global War on Terrorism Service' medal.
The single most important thing that America needs to do is for Congress to rescind Public Law 107-40, the 'AUMF' that authorized the President to use the US military against those deemed responsible for the 9/11 attacks (al-Qaeda and the Taliban), and with the impossible goal of 'preventing future terrorism' by those groups.
As far as I know, I am the first to call for this. I hope that I am not always the only one.
Congress got us into this mess and Congress has to get us out. Otherwise, we wait for the inevitable catastrophe to occur, just like the British and Soviet imperial efforts.
Rescind Public Law 107-40! End the insane and unwinnable war.
and you know...the afghans being a people descended or related to the original Aryans and from whom the very ancient indian subcontinent peoples derived their culture and ethnicity - even if today they are different nations --
can also apply the old Indian subcontinent saying to western imperialists, all the way from the greeks of alexander of macedonia to today:
"WE WERE HERE LONG BEFORE YOU WERE TRIBES IN IN YOUR LANDS......WE WILL STILL BE HERE LONG AFTER YOUR EMPIRES AND CIVILIZATIONS ARE NO MORE".
the USA Empire? if the soviets who KNEW MORE and had MORE relationships and cultural affinities WITH these central asians (being that the Russians THEMSELVES are outgrowths of the very old central asian cultures many many eons ago - as far back as 30,000 years ago) couldn't manage afghanistan or pakistan --
how much more a MERE 200-plus year old nation like the USA that stumbles blindly through its own arrogance and IGNORANCE? trying to play the game of "empire?"..
it TOO will be buried or hacked to pieces in central asia...FASTER than americans can imagine.
if anything -- obama and the pentagon is ALREADY being checkmated BY putin and the russians :
they have just signed a MILITARY PACT with FORMER SOVIET REPUBLICS like kyrgystan, turkmenistan, kazakhstan, balukhistan...with Central command IN RUSSIA for "mutual protection" and "Quick response" to ANY foreign or "terrorist" (see how they are now also adopting the Bush wording as a cover for mutual military cooperation? that's ANOTHER unintended consequence of US intrusions) etc..
you can BET that this is russia's attempt to firm up its "near abroad" -- to squeeze out the "foreigner" and WHO IS THAT?
the nation that DOESN"T BELONG THERE in their own region and neighborhood that is trying to impose its presence and will and militarism where it DOESN"T BELONG.
don't americans UNDERSTAND something SO SIMPLE?
you don't go barging in someone else's neighborhood acting like you are the owner...you just DON'T.
ESPECIALLY when you are dealing with people whose cultures are FAR MORE COMPLEX and FAR FAR OLDER than YOURS! and can teach YOU a thing or two about "balancing power" among a complex tapestry of interests and rivalries and co-existence bred and grown over thousands of years.
you only LOOK STUPID - like a mindless big bodied bully that will one day be TORN APART into pieces.....in a manner the Ancient Chinese Saying would PERFECTLY describe:
"DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS".
teddy: I always agree with most of what you say, but you really need to know that your posts would be much more effective if you'd restrain the impulse to incessantly CAPITALIZE. You're yelling at everyone, and that's not a terribly effective method for getting your point across. No one in here believes America should continue bullying its way around the world. We're all just as fed up with this pretense to hegemonic domination as you are. No need to constantly bellow your opposition to American belligerence on this site. We're the choir.
Obama was promising to shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan over a year ago, before he got the nomination. This is the main reason I didn't vote for him. If all he's going to do that departs from the Bush doctrine of invading anyone in its path of world economic and political hegemony, is to wreak havoc and destruction in a different country, to no productive purpose, as Engelhardt says, then he's not significantly any different from the neocons who've caused all our present problems. He's just focused on a new tactic in the grand design of American imperialism. This is change nobody needs.
Thanks for Reminding me Ephraim.
The Afghans are not Aryans. There never was any "Aryan Invasion" of the Indian subcontinent. That is all a bunch of trash assembled during the 19th century to explain the finding of cultures and civilizations far more advanced than anything that existed in Europe at the time. The credo of Orientalism held that no Asian could ever be as advanced as a European, so the myth of the Aryans was invented. And this discrimination still exists today as western trained anthropologists are unwilling to acknowledge the truth that the Vedic peoples had a very advanced civilization 6-8 thousand years prior to the rise of the Mesopotamian civilizations which allowed that region to be termed the Cradle of Civilization. A place to restart your education is with this book. You will also want to read Eden in the East and the other works by its author. There's so much more beyond those suggestions. Martin Bernal's Black Athena, Edward Said's Orientalism, and Joseph Campbell's four volume Masks of God, and Noah's Flood are a few books from my library I'd suggest.
actually , you are late.
the most recent DNA scientific research based on years of spanning the globe for human travels have now proven .. the ULTIMATE proof - IN OUR BLOOD -- and BEYOND the resulting "cultural" evidences - IS that in central asia - right where the afghans and pakistanis ARE -- were the aryans. in fact , altough i forgot their native terms - they DO have a term for it which translates as ARYAN. it has in fact nothing to do with the later western ideology of "aryan" and those "blue eyed" stuff....
this aryan result later moved SOUTH into the northern rivers of India to establish the first empires there....while very far south in along the shores of south india were a separate line that derives from the original black people from africa who travelled along the shorelines until they , somehow, found themselves in australia -
everything is handed down in UNCHANGED , UNBROKEN DNA strands of the chromosomes passed down through the MALES .
it si a pretty well-known fact now in scientific circles actually .
Indian Scientists themselves, through studies of these chromosomes acknowledge the link between the 'aryans' in central asia and themselves, including even their sacred "sanskrit" which also contains references to the word "aryan".
anyway -- the Central asian region became the first "nursery" of the people who originally emerged out of south/eastern africa , travelled north - bypassed what is NOW the Middle east -- and established themselves more firmly in central asia. FROM THERE -- they DIVIDED into THREE branches --
one went ON deep into China right in the middle of the last "ice age" - and of course from there crossing the then-dried-bering straight - into the americas...
another divideditself penetrating into russia and south into india (the aryans) -
and LAST and LATEST and YOUNGEST -- went west to europe , whcih by the time they did that - with the changes in their physiologies already were lighter skinned and already wearing "cold weather" clothing, and so on...
researches actually had to look for particular specific individuals, region by region, under severe bloodtest methods -- for this .
there is in fact , for example, a family in Kazakhstan, i believe, that has for unbroken generations lived in the SAME area - grass land - whose current "paternal" leader - a man in his 50's is the DIRECT descendant in unbroken chromosomal line handed down from male to male - and that spans about 30,000 years...far older than the "cultural" ethnololic evidences...i mean - this is beyond culture now. it is pure "blood" evidence that runs in our own veins today.
of the very first AFRICAN descended people who eventually , generations of foot march later, established themselves in Central Asia. of course he speaks russian today. but is considered by geneticists to be the "oldest" living "aryan".
some of hsi children are blondish, he is himself dark haired and has chinese eyes, etc....
but tracing it all back - to africa - the geneticists found the original tribe and people still existing in africa that are called "mongo" people...whose families, unbroken through the centuries - comprise of individuals whose features range from very tall -to short, to straight haired, to curly, to wide round eyes, to chinese like eyes, to thick lips to thin, etc....meaning : this tribe contains ALL the chromosomes that became "separated" later on in other ethniticites.
that's how the long line of "how the aryans" came to be in central asia. which has of course a far longer history than the European myths of "aryanism" made out of course to benefit the ideas of the "super race" of hitler, etc.
even if , IN FACT< the europeans just were the LAST of the strains that emerged out of the "nursery" that was established in Central Asia long ago.
in fact. the REALLY proper way to describe OURSELVES is :
no really "chinese or mongoloid" or "aryan" or whatever myths we have out of those ..........
but we are really, ALL of us...... AFRICANS.
oh -- i just want to add, for what it's worth -- that i'm quite aware of those books and such studies...but also that among my close friends is a persian woman (a very , very beautiful one too) who is an architect and musician and certainly quite aware of the history of that region...and understands, to put it mildly, the notions from europe about "aryan" - and is herself part russian, and persian.
Then you are saying you're familiar with this work and additional work undertaken since its publication. Frawley uses genetic evidence to disprove the Aryan Myth. Can you provide sources for the information you cite? Thanks.
You are RIGHT about the genetic evidence, actually.. and that is right along the lines of what i was relating.
i think we are both agreeing on the "eurocentric" ideas of "aryanism" part of which was to create some myth about aryans in india .
in a sense they WERE right -- btu for the WRONG reasons.
what i learned was on documentaries on PBS - they were six-hour shows by a geneticist who traveled across the globe for it.
then some years later -- a separate study confirmed it - spearheaded by scientists in india also...again... leading to the same conclusions- basically :
that in our genetics is the HISTORY of human "movement" ..
and of course - anyone can put in what they like about cultures and ethological evidences such as human civilizations.
the main points were that - :where EVEN human civilization evidence could not be found -- it is in our own BODIES and blood that our "movements" as people would finally reside.
were we to have no "cultural edifices" to show what civilizations were - our own bodies would show where we went, where we lived, who we came from, who were the results and offspring, etc. because
our blood doesn't lie.
it was beautiful and the more i watched it (i taped it and share it with friends) -
the more my hair stands at the AWE for it all..how beautiful our common heritage truly is and how wonderful the species is in all our variety -- as "africans".
just beautiful. it makes my hair stand just writing this again.
hi Karlof1 -- this is what I watched:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/12/1212_021213_journeyofman.html
http://www.shoppbs.org/sm-pbs-journey-of-man-dvd--pi-1402989.html
The Y chromosome work is intriguing, but mitochondrial DNA provides more depth of time. You might look into this and this.
If people could only realize that we all come from the same tribe, then we might get the global cooperation needed to overcome our multiple crises.
Engelhardt sez: "Despite escalating worries about the deteriorating situation, no one in our nation's capital is ready to believe that Afghanistan could actually be the "graveyard" for the American role as the dominant hegemon on this planet."
***
That ship already sailed, ran aground, and is sinking into the drifting sands of the Tigris and Euphrates.
There is no longer a functioning empire, only a heavily gilded Third-World country flailing blindly with its blunt instruments.
and this is because they are under the Delusion that IRAQ was "won" and already " a success " when in fact all they did was HAND IT OVER to IRAN!!! which - with its shiite influence is the ONE power that is able to KEEP iraq from EXPLODING under the face of the americans there and TRAP them in teh Sands of Ancient Mesopotamia.
and they THINK that they can "move on" like a swarm of locusts to afghanistan under the guise of "war on terror" or going after "criminals" --
who instead LOOK AT THE USA and the west AS the CRIMINALS interloping ON THEIR LANDS!
and THAT is why they WILl fail. because they are "moving on" from ONE MONUMENTAL FAILURE to ANOTHER that will swallow them up like a blackhole for all their "technological prowess" that will only show the world tyhe COWARDLY nature of american "hegemony" and only give other nations MORE reason to RESIST .
already - it is happening after all..and there's NOT A DAMN THING the USA policy makers can do about it in the end...before "those people kick us out of their lands" (patrick buchanan)....
it is a question not of IF -- but WHEN america will BE kicked out - humiliatingly - whether the USA leaders and punditry ADMIT IT or not --
but even if they DO NOT admit it and massage the results in their media for "american consumption" in the effort to keep americans from knowing the full truth of the USA's OWN FAILED STATE policies, domestically and foreign, so americans can continue to "support" the "american way" - which is actually used AGAINST their interests -
there is NOTHING the USA can do about what the REST of the world THINKS and based on THAT WILL do if the USA continues its ways -- and in the END--- THAT is what will count for the FATE of the USA as a nation.
it is MORE dependent on the rest of the world for ITS good graces THAN the rest of the world is dependent on USA for ITS existence and prosperity .
it is a simple fact of nature --
6 billion people are NOT going to DEPEND on a country with 300 million people that they SEE as the MOST EXPLOITATIVE of all.
if anything they will MORE LIKELY than not -- form themselves into alliances , even if out of convenience to PROTECT themselves from being "separately" ASSAULTED by the USA ..as they HAVE seen it DO to numerous countries.
the USA leaders HAVE NOT YET LEARNED that lesson or REFUSE to learn it.
This is a somewhat tiresome trip down memory lane, again I must ask, why do these folks keep writing the same thing over and over? Talk about a graveyard haunting, and the pot calling the kettle black. As if those who pride themselves as the super-pundits are any less guilty for our current framework? They have had their part in writers block in imbalanced focus on what not to do, and even the strange and eerie obsession in what those who do what we should not do, end up doing. I mean it is fascinating but at what point will we be willing to let our attention be caught up equally in the good and righteous?
I think it's past time for this super-pundit to come crashing down off of his own super-punditry and talk some good old fashioned plain talk about what we should be doing. He could start by congratulating Mrs. Goodman, Mrs. McCaskill and that other gal promoting squatting on ones rights as remedy to the wrongs. When the super-pundits elevate this simple clean corrective action to the level they do graveyard politics, it might really help. Then we can call them saving-pundits.
What happens when snowflakes stick together?...............friends come together and have snow ball fights. :)
Leea
It is beginning to look more and more like 'taking to the streets' is the only way.
When our leaders do not listen to us on how to spend our money, or how to act means that we have no control over our destiny. Governments are supposed to be servants of the people - not the other way around.
I would hate to see it come to past, for it will be a bloodbath - why do you think Obama has not repealed the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, torn down the KBR-built detention facilities? Our masters are afraid of the populace and what will transpire if and when 'to the barricades' becomes a rallying cry on U.S. soil.
But I could be wrong !
Well if they think they can actually take on millions of Americans who just want democracy, and that the rest of the world will sit by while they try to do so, they are getting dumb and desperate indeed. I don't think this is going to happen, we moved past that point of time yesterday.
But I could be wrong.
What happens when snowflakes stick together?...............friends come together and have snow ball fights. :)
Leea
i hope you are RIGHT Leea -- and it doesn't come to that. i really hope YOU are right. americans , like all others, are inherently decent and honest and hardworking and generous people with sincerity in their hearts..and they don't deserve this kind of treatment from their own government or those that control their lives.
it is just that they are swallowed up for being americans in their own MISGUIDED and DESTRUCTIVE and HARMFUL ......
:"OUR BIG BOSS...our SUPERNATIONALISTIC CAPITALISM" (general smedley butler).
and the PRICE is paid in untold , unnecessary suffering for Americans AND the rest of the world as the HORRIBLE consequence of that "BIG BOSS"'s existence.
"taking to the streets" is actually, unsurprisingly it will prove, imo, what the Powers that be are WAITING FOR. because THAT will provide themwith a NATIONAL EXCUSE to "protect america" from "harm -- both foreign AND DOMESTIC".
people should NEVER forget THAT part. because it what can be used as an excuse to MOBILIZE the armed forces - already in place - for "domestic instability prevention" ...and THEN
you have OPENLY applied FASCISM.
that fact alone that CORPORATISM IS the american "way" - shows already that Fascism -- it's "soft" version -- has already BEEN in effect for decades.
one does not go to "work" and "punch in" and BRING one's "freedoms and liberties" in america, is it not so? because the IMPLICT threat is "loss of job" which is based on "cultural" pressure....
but LURKING BEHIND that is CORPORATE OWNERSHIP of the glorified american SLAVE -- who - if in the times of "taking to the streets" - and can't be "controlled" by means of the USUAL ways (corporate culture pressures and policies) -- will have to be "controlled" BY MILITARY means to 'get back to work'.......and "rebuild america" as they would then say....
americans are , in many ways, more than the people of other nations -- TRAPPED in the petard of their own making because of the DELUSIONS about "having freedom" and "liberties" which they REFUSED to excercise when they had the opportunities to do so in a SERIOUS , TRUTHFUL, way -- as their own liberties were BOUGHT and PRICED DOWN by their own masters.
americans ARE trapped. imo. I only hope it doesn't get worse or SPREADS abroad some more, more than the USA has already been spreading it with its "capitalism" and "corporatism" culture...aided and abetted by its War Mentality Militarism.
and if americans have FAILED so utterly to prevent this . it is largely because THEY are the "foreigners" in their own country = treated as SUCH by the POWER masters -- and therefore, BELIEVING that by "being americans" they are IN CONTROL -- were the EASIEST to CONTROL........
while the people of other lands, even if they suffered the consequences of american interferences in their lands AT LEAST are TRUE foreigners and HAVE the CONSCIOUSNESS and CLARITY about BEING invaded by the USA, economically or militarily and are UNDER NO ILLUSIONS that what the corporatist culture of america is bringing them is an IRON HAND behind "velvet gloves" of "free markets and democracy".
americans have NO such means of clarity because they have become, by the nature of being "citizens" , are PART and PARCEL of their own Masters' PROJECT of dominance OVER THEM...and it is through their OWN self-made myths about american exceptionality that they are MOST EASILY dominated by their own masters.
that's why I think americans, in their own s0-called prosperity which has turned out to be LESS than it was claimed -- are TRAPPED.
if the afghanis FIGHT against foreign invaders as they alwasy have done -- it is their right and their natural reaction. but they would be fighting for their nationalism and desire to be left to follow their own destiny as they always have for thousands of years.
but where america is concerned as an EMPIRE going abroad "searching for Monsters to destroy" (James madison) -
the saying by a historian applies:
"ALL FOREIGN WARS are REALLY WARS against the DOMESTIC POPULATION..for they are DOMESTIC POLITICS by OTHER means".
because we must remember one thing-- there is NO country on earth that has SPANNED teh GLOBE fomenting wars or instabilities and having to "deal and fix" the MESS result and consequences THAN the USA itself.
it doesn't matter whether it is Vietnam or Indochina. Central asia or the Russian "near abroad" across europe and south of russia - or around china using japan , or africa, or south america , or palestine, or even NORTH of CANADA for control of the north pole which the usa has NO monopoly over..or fomenting insurrection and destabilizing DEMOCRATICALLY elected government in Iran in 1953 and installing the Right wing Dictatorship of the SHAH and HIS torturing regime...
there is NO country that has been MORE at the root of EVERY SINGLE GLOBAL problem , economically and militarily and geopstrategically -- because the USA couldn't keep its hands and fingers TO ITSELF but instead POKES it in other people's business and pokes THEM in the eye.
and THEN expects the rest of the world to smile and say : THANK YOU.
NO dear, it doesn't work that way.
"Richard Freeman, a Harvard economist, argues that the U.S. bubble economy had something in common with the old Soviet economy. The Soviet Union's growth was artificially raised by huge industrial output that ended up having little use. America's was artificially raised by mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations and even the occasional Ponzi scheme."
The Harvard economist misses and Tom fails to mention another parallel between the two empires: "The Soviet Union's growth was artificially raised by huge industrial output that ended up having little use;" the same ought to be said of the trillions spent on weapons and the Military Indistrial Complex, en toto, which have "little use." When combined together, Ponzi Street and the MIC have internally bankrupted the US Empire, a condition becoming more visible daily. As a historian, I would focus on the fateful choice to "bailout" Ponzi Street first at the expense of Main Street. A fitting epitaph would read: The US Empire failed to master the greatest threats to itself: its own arrogance and ignorance fueled by its hubris. These character traits embodied in the term American Exceptionalism ended up being more potent than any hydrogen bomb, which as in Oedipus Rex blinded the Imperial leaders from seeing that they would be the source of their own destruction.
Yes, yes, yes, excellent points. The enemy within was passed over for the enemy without.
What happens when snowflakes stick together?...............friends come together and have snow ball fights. :)
Leea
So brilliantly explained from you - Karlof1 !
in fact one thing that comes to mind through your clear explanation is:
The US economy and political structure has been , until before the financial bubble burst - the very heart of capitalism -
it has really been a WAR economy , the very Military/Industrial/Congressional Complex that Eisenhower warned about - funded THROUGH , not BY, but THROUGH means of the Financial sector using UP public common wealth in all its forms -- ...and that UNDERNEATH the "benign" facade of "prosperity" --
has really been a MILITARISM , and FASCIST IRON hand...that is right now asserting its full dominance OPENLY.
This is the heart of what Benito Mussolini described:
"THE PROPER DEFINITION OF FASCISM SHOULD REALLY BE........CORPORATISM......FOR THIS IS THE MARRIAGE BETWEEN CORPORATE INTERESTS WITH THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE STATE TO ADVANCE THE AGENDA OF THE RIGHT".
there is a REASON after all -- why the United States is called among industrial nations "the most conservative".
and that conservatism IS fascism, war economy, empire, behind the facade of "free markets".
what i find disingenuously ironic is -- even as the US economy tanks through ITS own wrongheaded policies in its attempts for global domination -- whethere by means of the Dollar hegemony manipulations or by cultural or militaristic means - the USA has the GALL to accuse , say, China of "manipulating currency" to advance china's "export-oriented economy" at the "expense of america"....
when in FACT it has been AMERICAN dollar hegemony manipulations -- the Fedrates being ONE of those forms of manipulations -- that has been at the root of the problem INCLUDING its INTENDED effects of favoring "business" and "supply side" economics over LABOR -- with ITS CONSEQUENCES abroad in which a country such as China for example , to play the game IMPOSED by washington globally -- (rooted in the dollar hegemony of pegging foreign currencies TO the dollar) -- has to "expand" its economy through a "foreign export" orientation AS DEMANDED BY the washington consensus .
and THEN the USA -- imploding on its own petard - TURNS around and accuses China of "currency manipulation" when all that china is doing is what it has done for centuries -- KEEP ITS INTERNAL STABILITY by refusing to "float" its currency as the FedBank of the USA demands -- which it demands BECAUSE it is the way to "fix" the US economy (as they see it) without EVER admitting it is in such a state (trade deficit, etc.)
BECAUSE OF US ECONOMIC DOINGS and POLICIES themselves!
and without EVER acknowledging or admitting that the LEADING CURRENCY MANIPULATOR in the world
IS the United States of America...but that when its own currency manipulations CAN"T COVER UP its INHERENTLY self-destructive policies, particularly towards LOWER or STAGNANT wages (which drive people into a "credit economy" - borrowing and borrowing against the future while creating a masquerade of prosperity bubbles with financial shenanigans) -- it BLAMES SOMEONE ELSE - such as china.
this is like a SERIAL Fire-starter -- that when the Fire starts to burn himself and others and his own house -- CRIES:
"THEY did it!!!".
You wrote:
The Harvard economist misses and Tom fails to mention another parallel between the two empires: "The Soviet Union's growth was artificially raised by huge industrial output that ended up having little use;" the same ought to be said of the trillions spent on weapons and the Military Indistrial Complex, en toto, which have "little use."
I believe Chalmers Johnson has commented on this at length, as you may be aware.
Another dimension to the self-destructive policies is that they were only self-destructive with regard to the future of the nation, not necessarily with regard to all individuals within the nation. The actors knew they could divorce themselves from the future of the nation, taking their ill-gotten gains with them. As sophisticated players, I would suspect that many used "rational decision-making" in which they placed a probability on the various outcomes, matched with the value to them of the outcome, and then maximized the expected value of their own individual outcomes based on summing all such terms (e.g. they may have preferred staying in the US, but it was worth the risk to destroy the US if they made that much extra money, as there are many pleasant alternative domiciles). Analyzing it from that perspective, the empire's collapse appears to be more the result of a belief in individualism, of focusing on narrow self-interest and not broadening self-interest to merge with the interests of the whole community. To put it another way, it is the free rider problem in the extreme case. But then, one might argue that they are inadvertently acting in the interest of the whole of humanity by bringing the empire down, though I doubt it is from a broadened sense of self-interest, and it certainly could be done in a manner more consistent with the interests of the whole of humanity.
The behavior you cite was noted and written about by the late socialhistorian Christopher Lasch in his Revolt of the Elites almost 15 years ago. Another interesting work is Kammen's People of Paradox. But Lasch hit the nail on the head, especially when you couple Culture of Narcissism closely with Revolt.
Quite some time back on this site I briefly detailed the need to change from a competition based culture to one embracing cooperation, the emphatic need to ressurect the idea of Commonweal if we are to survive the several crises that confront us. The notion of superiors and subordinates must be dispelled and replaced with a hierarcy based on wisdom and knowledge that promotes the wellbeing of the whole community--cultural traits that still exist in many places on the planet. A great deal of education--in this case unlearning--must be done to overcome and destroy for all time the myth of American Exceptionalism. and yes the task is multigenerational. The Cooperative Global Economy very briefly outlined in Putin's Davos speech must replace the one currently based on competition, and with it is the above necessary cultural component, without which any new economic paradigm will be insufficent.
When the planet's future is realistically contemplated, there is no room for any empires. Upon that achievement, humanity at large will finally be civil, perhaps.
I just read Putin's speech again, and as I replied this morning on the other thread, I do not see how his argument was anything but the promotion of Russian interests and I do not see how it was inconsistent with the development of a worldwide corporate plutocracy or corporatocracy. I also found it disingenuous, given Putin's history (though I was on the side of Russia in the dispute with Georgia). Certainly it is better to be a plutocrat supporting disarmament and peace than one supporting military buildup and war, but it is not what I would call "enlightened." On the other hand, I would label your argument regarding the value of cooperation within human society as "enlightened." I have had similar thoughts for decades. Maybe that is what makes us progressives.
As for the US, it is probably better for humanity if its economy contracts greatly, even disintegrates, and the US is made anew.
The U.S. made anew! What a frightening thought. I'll settle for its demise, thanks, Kivals. Once is already more than enough!
www.dangerouscreation.com
I was thinking of a new US that is in the nature of, in Monty Python-speak, "and now for something completely different." However, if it is just going to be in the nature of a remake of an old horror flick, I am with you.
Sioux Rose
KARLOF: Excellent post. You articulate exactly what I see & sense & believe.
Despite escalating worries about the deteriorating situation, no one in our nation's capital is ready to believe that Afghanistan could actually be the "graveyard" for the American role as the dominant hegemon on this planet.
Then those MoFo's will also go the way of George Wanker Bush. And, as usual, others will do the totally needless dying. And like Vietnam and Iraq, we'll leave the place wearing a shit eating grin.
REMEMBER BUILDING SEVEN!!!.
This entire geopolitical charade was triggered by our own domestic "reichstag" 911.
It's about oil, money & heroin. Not empire building, its a total ruse. Mafia style.
The cognitive dissonance, of lies gossip and spin is staggering, we have no chance at all of actually getting the facts straight, due to our crazy media.
It's all arguments over the details of a fictitious narrative!!! Even the most serious journalist is lost in a confused hallucination. This "WAR" is truly the end of history.
There is no completion no severence, it explodes into a zillion dwindling nightmares.
this is correct...direct thinking, such as this, on any topic, frees up brain cycles for other topics, but only if recognized...look how long humans have argued over the 'sun vs. earth as the center of the universe' thing...people knew it many thousands of years ago, but people were still having to 're-discover' it just a few hundred years ago...this whole planet is a crime syndicate, folks, and we need to start figuring out how we're going to defend ourselves against their new, global (even orbital), all-encompassing tools of surveillance and coercion...if you think things are getting bad now...
in the total long scheme of things, beyond its political and cultural ideas, beyond its triumphalism about its military and economic might ...
the USA is really just a TEENAGER - or even less than that --
like a teenager that is so overwhelmed by his own growing power and muscles and quickness that thinks nothing can harm him but also is always "out for adventure" thinking that if he doesn't do so - others will get ahead of him...ge elbows his way around, kicks sand around on others' faces, grabs the girls and goodies he wants to feed his growing image of himself..but in his quest for endless acquisition, one day running so fast - hits against a branch lying low ...and sees stars while he lies down and wonders what went wrong...or he jumps so high , thinking he is flying, while throwing banana peels on others to make sure he is always ahead...but somehow when he lands -- he steps on a banana peel he threw , and he is lucky if his foot doesn't also land on a tiny nail with bacteria withouth his even noticing it -- and it sends tetanus right through his big powerful muscled body -- and he ends up ..........stiff like a log....
until of course he learns what it means to stumble and fall flat on his face as all others have.....
the question is -- will this over-grown teenager, bulging with steroid enhanced muscles (like its economy and militarism and sense of importance) -- learn?.
it applies to the USA what an old saying goes:
"youth is wasted on the young".
that is what the USA is like.
Leea -
In the spirit of "good old fashioned straight talk about what we should be doing", I suggest the following - within a one year publicly declared time frame.
Out of Iraq. Completely. With a vow to never again send American ground forces into the Middle East unless they are functioning as part of a legitimate, UN sanctioned international peace keeping mission (or, of course, they are sent there following a formal declaration of war if some Middle Eastern country actually was crazy enough to attack the United States).
Out of Iraq by way of Afghanistan. The Karzai regime has already blown its chances. If the Taliban take over in Kabul in the power vacuum when the Karzai regime falls, the Islamic theocrats will also take effective control of the northwest tribal areas, the Swat Valley, and possibly overthrow the Zadari government in Pakistan itself in cahoots with Taliban sympathizers inside the Pakistani ISI.
That piece of cosmic geopolitical blowback (a genuine domino effect catastrophe) must be somehow contained, so that the United States (sorry, NATO) can withdraw from Afghanistan responsibly. If it takes a temporary troop surge in order to insure a secure, complete withdrawal from the graveyard of empires, so be it. The long term end serves to justify the means. As part of that process, the White House should declare all NATO forces will be out of Afghanistan within 6 months of Osama bin Laden, Zwahiri, and their al Qaeda jihadi brethren being sent to a neutral Muslim nation for eventual trial under Muslim or international law. The sooner they are turned over, the sooner we leave.
Once out of Iraq and out of Afghanistan, then couch the entire domestic political debate as guns versus butter. Scale back on the Pentagon and national security establishment's grandiose global dreams, and redirect those federal funds directly into domestic infrastructure, health care, and repairing the faltering economy of Main Street America.
Squarely define this trade off for what it is: a choice of guns or butter. If forced to chose between more and bigger guns or butter on the table, for once American consumer materialism can function to curb militarism and promote peace in a multipolar world.
Obama's willingness to keep Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense and keep a lot of Bush era hawks in high administration posts may have some method behind the apparent madness. These guys' buddies, and some of these guys themselves, created the mess in Iraq and the mess in Afghanistan on Bush's watch. Give them a fair chance to clean up their own mess, within a precise, fixed time frame.
If they surge and cajole and try all sorts of counterinsurgency mix tactics on the ground and diplomacy outreach but still fail, then declare the whole imperial pipe dream dead and over. Sack them all, and bring in a new team with new ideas.
How's that for reaching across the bipartisan divide and making creative use of the crappy hand the Obama administration has been dealt?
Bill from Saginaw
the problem with all that BillFromSaginaw - is the War pArty will never permit it. it is now deeply embedded in the deepest interstices of american culture and what even america thinks of itself .
that kind of "move" is - to the powers-that-be - the equivalent of "showing weakness" and "defeat"...and they will never accept such a thing. of course while politicians like obama talk about diplomacy and "talking ad listening" their ultimate reason for existence is to serve the american WILL To Dominate...nothing takes place of that..not honor, not truth, not even prosperity nor peace. it is just a lunacy of a kind that can not and is not willing to see it "any other way"....
and even any kind of actions towards "responsible" withdrawal..even the VERY word "withdrawal" elicits to these people "weakness"> for their ONLY precious sentiment is to "surge" and "penetrate" and "victory" by means of bombing from the air, if necessary to "bomb the barbarians into submission" just like Robert McNamara tried in vietnam.
since the USA exists and continues on the fundamental principle of "might" - it can NOT do otherwise. it can't help itself.
therefore -- in the end - it will have to end its empire by means other than through its own "initiatives"..it will be FORCED to leave...as patrich buchanan said "we better get out of those lands before they KICK us out"....
because -- america knowns only ONE thing -- and speaks and understand only ONE thing:
FORCE.
and it will have to be forced out by the natives of those regions.
it has always been the way in history, after all. and the USA is not going to be "exceptional" in its refusal to obey history and nature ....but it will also not be exceptional in its failure to avoid that fate.
the only exceptional thing will be -- how humiliating it already IS even before the USA is made to accept the will of the natives of the regions rather than the other way around as the usa has attemped to do.
Well Bill, looks like you are at least one step ahead of President Obama and I applaud you for that. The notion of giving a chance for change to work through the system as it is, is a very appealing idea. I'm all for giving chances, I just don't know that it is ultimately up to chance no matter how giving we all may be in it. No matter what I will give to the right cause, the cause of freedom, enlightenment, fairness, equality, love because it is the only cause that I want to see returned to me. Can this nation make it by choice? I have the audacity to hope so.
What happens when snowflakes stick together?...............friends come together and have snow ball fights. :)
Leea
Hopefully you are more right than wrong, BillfromSaginaw.
one thing that worries me about all these is :
EVEN were obama or some leader with enough strength could resist things that we know are not right....i mean , even a child would know who is not coerced with cultural acclimatization....what are we to make of the fact that - regardless of how americans as a whole COULD be excused for believing the invasion of iraq, which is illegal and criminal and fraudulent and has caused untold suffering to the iraqis- far, far, far more than it has for americans no matter how much americans WEEP for their lost ones (for it is THEY that invaded a country that had no designs against the USA nor was capable of nor was connected to 9/11 except in the insistence of the Liars of the USA) -
what are we to make of americans WILLINGLY "for invading" and bombing iraq - and then only turned against the war when shown it was a lie, and then even if it was not a lie, turning against it, like in vietnam
ONLY WHEN IT was clear that , despite the mantra from the pentagon and pundits and media - america "wasn't winning" and it was "not worth the price?""
i mean -- doesn't it reveal something about americans? that - so "long as the price is RIGHT" - invasion, legal or illegal, criminal or not, for or not for democracy, is somehow alright
so "long as america can WIN?"
for this kind of mentality does NOT excuse americans because of "lack of information" about the supposed enemy...rather it exposes what is a war mentality WITHIN the body politic of americans that just needed the RIGHT "price" towards "victory".
and THAT bothers me. ..for no matter how well the Lies are told,,,,Lies are also accepted by a population that is already predisposed to accept them - as can be seen in the way americans have led their own "prosperity" who should have known better when something that seems too good to be true IS UNtrue. ..but allowed themselves to be snagged by siren calls...whether it is about "ecomony" and "realizing the american dream" or about invading another country.
there has to be reason for such a mentality -- and it can only come from an inherently "supremacist" mentality in which the "right price" for invasions of other lands with the consequence of destroying their lives and cultures which are just as precious TO THEM as americans' way of life is to americans - is "no matter how many hajjis die" -- "so long as not TOO Many americans die" or "so long as the money price is tolerable for OUR wallets".
in short -- since americans are so belabored with the idea of MONEY and acquisitions -
what is the price americans PUT on the LIFE of an IRAQI boy or old woman or "unborn child" who dies in the womb of her mother trying to flee from bombs raining down upon them by US airplanes funded by american taxpayers "at the right price?" -- which is "maintain our way of life?". ...and in comparison with the life of an american BOY whose father is going to die in iraq or afghanistan?.
here applies the truth of what american ETHICS really are..and how genuine they are....and whether their morality is not just tied to their "supernationalistic capitalism" so long as the price it exacts is upon OTHERS rather than on themselves.
teddy, excellent, though troubling, observation. This truth needs to be faced. Don't know if a sufficiently large number of people will ever stop to think of this unless they tune out from the MSM and other influences (such as, sadly, even some churches).
Highintel: Can we do better?