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TechnoratiThree Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire
And Ten Steps to Take to Do So
However ambitious President Barack Obama's domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former Soviet Union.
According to the 2008 official Pentagon inventory of our military bases around the world, our empire consists of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S. territories. We deploy over 190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. In just one such country, Japan, at the end of March 2008, we still had 99,295 people connected to U.S. military forces living and working there -- 49,364 members of our armed services, 45,753 dependent family members, and 4,178 civilian employees. Some 13,975 of these were crowded into the small island of Okinawa, the largest concentration of foreign troops anywhere in Japan.
These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs, an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is, control or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible.
We are like the British at the end of World War II: desperately trying to shore up an empire that we never needed and can no longer afford, using methods that often resemble those of failed empires of the past -- including the Axis powers of World War II and the former Soviet Union. There is an important lesson for us in the British decision, starting in 1945, to liquidate their empire relatively voluntarily, rather than being forced to do so by defeat in war, as were Japan and Germany, or by debilitating colonial conflicts, as were the French and Dutch. We should follow the British example. (Alas, they are currently backsliding and following our example by assisting us in the war in Afghanistan.)
Here are three basic reasons why we must liquidate our empire or else watch it liquidate us.
1. We Can No Longer Afford Our Postwar Expansionism
Shortly after his election as president, Barack Obama, in a speech announcing several members of his new cabinet, stated as fact that "[w]e have to maintain the strongest military on the planet." A few weeks later, on March 12, 2009, in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington DC, the president again insisted, "Now make no mistake, this nation will maintain our military dominance. We will have the strongest armed forces in the history of the world." And in a commencement address to the cadets of the U.S. Naval Academy on May 22nd, Obama stressed that "[w]e will maintain America's military dominance and keep you the finest fighting force the world has ever seen."
What he failed to note is that the United States no longer has the capability to remain a global hegemon, and to pretend otherwise is to invite disaster.
According to a growing consensus of economists and political scientists around the world, it is impossible for the United States to continue in that role while emerging into full view as a crippled economic power. No such configuration has ever persisted in the history of imperialism. The University of Chicago's Robert Pape, author of the important study Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House, 2005), typically writes:
"America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today's world of rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back on the Bush years as the death knell of American hegemony."
There is something absurd, even Kafkaesque, about our military empire. Jay Barr, a bankruptcy attorney, makes this point using an insightful analogy:
"Whether liquidating or reorganizing, a debtor who desires bankruptcy protection must provide a list of expenses, which, if considered reasonable, are offset against income to show that only limited funds are available to repay the bankrupted creditors. Now imagine a person filing for bankruptcy claiming that he could not repay his debts because he had the astronomical expense of maintaining at least 737 facilities overseas that provide exactly zero return on the significant investment required to sustain them... He could not qualify for liquidation without turning over many of his assets for the benefit of creditors, including the valuable foreign real estate on which he placed his bases."
In other words, the United States is not seriously contemplating its own bankruptcy. It is instead ignoring the meaning of its precipitate economic decline and flirting with insolvency.
Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the Military Invades our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books, 2008), calculates that we could clear $2.6 billion if we would sell our base assets at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and earn another $2.2 billion if we did the same with Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. These are only two of our over 800 overblown military enclaves.
Our unwillingness to retrench, no less liquidate, represents a striking historical failure of the imagination. In his first official visit to China since becoming Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner assured an audience of students at Beijing University, "Chinese assets [invested in the United States] are very safe." According to press reports, the students responded with loud laughter. Well they might.
In
May 2009, the Office of Management and Budget predicted that in 2010
the United States will be burdened with a budget deficit of at least
$1.75 trillion. This includes neither a projected $640 billion budget
for the Pentagon, nor the costs of waging two remarkably expensive
wars. The sum is so immense that it will take several generations for
American citizens to repay the costs of George W. Bush's imperial
adventures -- if they ever can or will. It represents about 13% of our
current gross domestic product (that is, the value of everything we
produce). It is worth noting that the target demanded of European nations wanting to join the Euro Zone is a deficit no greater than 3% of GDP.
Thus far, President Obama has announced measly cuts of only $8.8 billion in wasteful and worthless weapons spending, including his cancellation of the F-22 fighter aircraft. The actual Pentagon budget for next year will, in fact, be larger, not smaller, than the bloated final budget of the Bush era. Far bolder cuts in our military expenditures will obviously be required in the very near future if we intend to maintain any semblance of fiscal integrity.
2. We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and It Will Help Bankrupt Us
One of our major strategic blunders in Afghanistan was not to have recognized that both Great Britain and the Soviet Union attempted to pacify Afghanistan using the same military methods as ours and failed disastrously. We seem to have learned nothing from Afghanistan's modern history -- to the extent that we even know what it is. Between 1849 and 1947, Britain sent almost annual expeditions against the Pashtun tribes and sub-tribes living in what was then called the North-West Frontier Territories -- the area along either side of the artificial border between Afghanistan and Pakistan called the Durand Line. This frontier was created in 1893 by Britain's foreign secretary for India, Sir Mortimer Durand.
Neither Britain nor Pakistan has ever managed to establish effective control over the area. As the eminent historian Louis Dupree put it in his book Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 425): "Pashtun tribes, almost genetically expert at guerrilla warfare after resisting centuries of all comers and fighting among themselves when no comers were available, plagued attempts to extend the Pax Britannica into their mountain homeland." An estimated 41 million Pashtuns live in an undemarcated area along the Durand Line and profess no loyalties to the central governments of either Pakistan or Afghanistan.
The region known today as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan is administered directly by Islamabad, which -- just as British imperial officials did -- has divided the territory into seven agencies, each with its own "political agent" who wields much the same powers as his colonial-era predecessor. Then as now, the part of FATA known as Waziristan and the home of Pashtun tribesmen offered the fiercest resistance.
According to Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, experienced Afghan hands and coauthors of Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story (City Lights, 2009, p. 317):
"If Washington's bureaucrats don't remember the history of the region, the Afghans do. The British used air power to bomb these same Pashtun villages after World War I and were condemned for it. When the Soviets used MiGs and the dreaded Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships to do it during the 1980s, they were called criminals. For America to use its overwhelming firepower in the same reckless and indiscriminate manner defies the world's sense of justice and morality while turning the Afghan people and the Islamic world even further against the United States."
In 1932, in a series of Guernica-like atrocities, the British used poison gas in Waziristan. The disarmament convention of the same year sought a ban against the aerial bombardment of civilians, but Lloyd George, who had been British prime minister during World War I, gloated: "We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers" (Fitzgerald and Gould, p. 65). His view prevailed.
The U.S. continues to act similarly, but with the new excuse that our killing of noncombatants is a result of "collateral damage," or human error. Using pilotless drones guided with only minimal accuracy from computers at military bases in the Arizona and Nevada deserts among other places, we have killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed bystanders in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Pakistani and Afghan governments have repeatedly warned that we are alienating precisely the people we claim to be saving for democracy.
When in May 2009, General Stanley McChrystal was appointed as the commander in Afghanistan, he ordered new limits on air attacks, including those carried out by the CIA, except when needed to protect allied troops. Unfortunately, as if to illustrate the incompetence of our chain of command, only two days after this order, on June 23, 2009, the United States carried out a drone attack against a funeral procession that killed at least 80 people, the single deadliest U.S. attack on Pakistani soil so far. There was virtually no reporting of these developments by the mainstream American press or on the network television news. (At the time, the media were almost totally preoccupied by the sexual adventures of the governor of South Carolina and the death of pop star Michael Jackson.)
Our military operations in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been plagued by inadequate and inaccurate intelligence about both countries, ideological preconceptions about which parties we should support and which ones we should oppose, and myopic understandings of what we could possibly hope to achieve. Fitzgerald and Gould, for example, charge that, contrary to our own intelligence service's focus on Afghanistan, "Pakistan has always been the problem." They add:
"Pakistan's army and its Inter-Services Intelligence branch... from 1973 on, has played the key role in funding and directing first the mujahideen [anti-Soviet fighters during the 1980s]... and then the Taliban. It is Pakistan's army that controls its nuclear weapons, constrains the development of democratic institutions, trains Taliban fighters in suicide attacks and orders them to fight American and NATO soldiers protecting the Afghan government." (p. 322-324)
The Pakistani army and its intelligence arm are staffed, in part, by devout Muslims who fostered the Taliban in Afghanistan to meet the needs of their own agenda, though not necessarily to advance an Islamic jihad. Their purposes have always included: keeping Afghanistan free of Russian or Indian influence, providing a training and recruiting ground for mujahideen guerrillas to be used in places like Kashmir (fought over by both Pakistan and India), containing Islamic radicalism in Afghanistan (and so keeping it out of Pakistan), and extorting huge amounts of money from Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf emirates, and the United States to pay and train "freedom fighters" throughout the Islamic world. Pakistan's consistent policy has been to support the clandestine policies of the Inter-Services Intelligence and thwart the influence of its major enemy and competitor, India.
Colonel Douglas MacGregor, U.S. Army (retired), an adviser to the Center for Defense Information in Washington, summarizes our hopeless project in South Asia this way: "Nothing we do will compel 125 million Muslims in Pakistan to make common cause with a United States in league with the two states that are unambiguously anti-Muslim: Israel and India."
Obama's mid-2009 "surge" of troops into southern Afghanistan and particularly into Helmand Province, a Taliban stronghold, is fast becoming darkly reminiscent of General William Westmoreland's continuous requests in Vietnam for more troops and his promises that if we would ratchet up the violence just a little more and tolerate a few more casualties, we would certainly break the will of the Vietnamese insurgents. This was a total misreading of the nature of the conflict in Vietnam, just as it is in Afghanistan today.
Twenty years after the forces of the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan in disgrace, the last Russian general to command them, Gen. Boris Gromov, issued his own prediction: Disaster, he insisted, will come to the thousands of new forces Obama is sending there, just as it did to the Soviet Union's, which lost some 15,000 soldiers in its own Afghan war. We should recognize that we are wasting time, lives, and resources in an area where we have never understood the political dynamics and continue to make the wrong choices.
3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases
In March, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert noted, "Rape and other forms of sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing." He continued:
"New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults -- 2,923 -- and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan [over the past year]. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and lining up in formation right beside them."
The problem is exacerbated by having our troops garrisoned in overseas bases located cheek-by-jowl next to civilian populations and often preying on them like foreign conquerors. For example, sexual violence against women and girls by American GIs has been out of control in Okinawa, Japan's poorest prefecture, ever since it was permanently occupied by our soldiers, Marines, and airmen some 64 years ago.
That island was the scene of the largest anti-American demonstrations since the end of World War II after the 1995 kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two Marines and a sailor. The problem of rape has been ubiquitous around all of our bases on every continent and has probably contributed as much to our being loathed abroad as the policies of the Bush administration or our economic exploitation of poverty-stricken countries whose raw materials we covet.
The military itself has done next to nothing to protect its own female soldiers or to defend the rights of innocent bystanders forced to live next to our often racially biased and predatory troops. "The military's record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it's atrocious," writes Herbert. In territories occupied by American military forces, the high command and the State Department make strenuous efforts to enact so-called "Status of Forces Agreements" (SOFAs) that will prevent host governments from gaining jurisdiction over our troops who commit crimes overseas. The SOFAs also make it easier for our military to spirit culprits out of a country before they can be apprehended by local authorities.
This issue was well illustrated by the case of an Australian teacher, a long-time resident of Japan, who in April 2002 was raped by a sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, then based at the big naval base at Yokosuka. She identified her assailant and reported him to both Japanese and U.S. authorities. Instead of his being arrested and effectively prosecuted, the victim herself was harassed and humiliated by the local Japanese police. Meanwhile, the U.S. discharged the suspect from the Navy but allowed him to escape Japanese law by returning him to the U.S., where he lives today.
In the course of trying to obtain justice, the Australian teacher discovered that almost fifty years earlier, in October 1953, the Japanese and American governments signed a secret "understanding" as part of their SOFA in which Japan agreed to waive its jurisdiction if the crime was not of "national importance to Japan." The U.S. argued strenuously for this codicil because it feared that otherwise it would face the likelihood of some 350 servicemen per year being sent to Japanese jails for sex crimes.
Since that time the U.S. has negotiated similar wording in SOFAs with Canada, Ireland, Italy, and Denmark. According to the Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces (2001), the Japanese practice has become the norm for SOFAs throughout the world, with predictable results. In Japan, of 3,184 U.S. military personnel who committed crimes between 2001 and 2008, 83% were not prosecuted. In Iraq, we have just signed a SOFA that bears a strong resemblance to the first postwar one we had with Japan: namely, military personnel and military contractors accused of off-duty crimes will remain in U.S. custody while Iraqis investigate. This is, of course, a perfect opportunity to spirit the culprits out of the country before they can be charged.
Within the military itself, the journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007), speaks of the "culture of unpunished sexual assaults" and the "shockingly low numbers of courts martial" for rapes and other forms of sexual attacks. Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, 2009), quotes this figure in a 2009 Pentagon report on military sexual assaults: 90% of the rapes in the military are never reported at all and, when they are, the consequences for the perpetrator are negligible.
It is fair to say that the U.S. military has created a worldwide sexual playground for its personnel and protected them to a large extent from the consequences of their behavior. As a result a group of female veterans in 2006 created the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN). Its agenda is to spread the word that "no woman should join the military."
I believe a better solution would be to radically reduce the size of our standing army, and bring the troops home from countries where they do not understand their environments and have been taught to think of the inhabitants as inferior to themselves.
10 Steps Toward Liquidating the Empire
Dismantling the American empire would, of course, involve many steps. Here are ten key places to begin:
1. We need to put a halt to the serious environmental damage done by our bases planet-wide. We also need to stop writing SOFAs that exempt us from any responsibility for cleaning up after ourselves.
2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of the "opportunity costs" that go with them -- the things we might otherwise do with our talents and resources but can't or won't.
3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism breeds the use of torture. In the 1960s and 1970s we helped overthrow the elected governments in Brazil and Chile and underwrote regimes of torture that prefigured our own treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. (See, for instance, A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors [Pantheon, 1979], on how the U.S. spread torture methods to Brazil and Uruguay.) Dismantling the empire would potentially mean a real end to the modern American record of using torture abroad.
4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening train of camp followers, dependents, civilian employees of the Department of Defense, and hucksters -- along with their expensive medical facilities, housing requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses, and so forth -- that follow our military enclaves around the world.
5. We need to discredit the myth promoted by the military-industrial complex that our military establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs, scientific research, and defense. These alleged advantages have long been discredited by serious economic research. Ending empire would make this happen.
6. As a self-respecting democratic nation, we need to stop being the world's largest exporter of arms and munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in the techniques of torture, military coups, and service as proxies for our imperialism. A prime candidate for immediate closure is the so-called School of the Americas, the U.S. Army's infamous military academy at Fort Benning, Georgia, for Latin American military officers. (See Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire [Metropolitan Books, 2004], pp. 136-40.)
7. Given the growing constraints on the federal budget, we should abolish the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and other long-standing programs that promote militarism in our schools.
8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in our armed forces by radically scaling back our reliance on civilian contractors, private military companies, and agents working for the military outside the chain of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (See Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater:The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Nation Books, 2007]). Ending empire would make this possible.
9. We need to reduce, not increase, the size of our standing army and deal much more effectively with the wounds our soldiers receive and combat stress they undergo.
10. To repeat the main message of this essay, we must give up our inappropriate reliance on military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy objectives.
Unfortunately, few empires of the past voluntarily gave up their dominions in order to remain independent, self-governing polities. The two most important recent examples are the British and Soviet empires. If we do not learn from their examples, our decline and fall is foreordained.
[Note on further reading on the matter of sexual violence in and around our overseas bases and rapes in the military: On the response to the 1995 Okinawa rape, see Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, chapter 2. On related subjects, see David McNeil, "Justice for Some. Crime, Victims, and the US-Japan SOFA," Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 8-1-09, March 15, 2009; "Bilateral Secret Agreement Is Preventing U.S. Servicemen Committing Crimes in Japan from Being Prosecuted," Japan Press Weekly, May 23, 2009; Dieter Fleck, ed., The Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces, Oxford University Press, 2001; Minoru Matsutani, "'53 Secret Japan-US Deal Waived GI Prosecutions," Japan Times, October 24, 2008; "Crime Without Punishment in Japan," the Economist, December 10, 2008; "Japan: Declassified Document Reveals Agreement to Relinquish Jurisdiction Over U.S. Forces," Akahata, October 30, 2008; "Government's Decision First Case in Japan," Ryukyu Shimpo, May 20, 2008; Dahr Jamail, "Culture of Unpunished Sexual Assault in Military," Antiwar.com, May 1, 2009; and Helen Benedict, "The Plight of Women Soldiers," the Nation, May 5, 2009.]
78 Comments so far
Show AllNo matter how bad, how horrendous, how ruinous things become, any government run by Republicans or Democrats will fight not just tooth and nail, but to the death to maintain the empire.
As a "military force" the USA has been exhibiting its defective and inefficient methods since the Korean War (not a victory not a defeat---a truce)
Vietnam was and is a joke for the USA to use as an example of 'military prowess'............
Afghanistan and Iraq are already lost.
And (as always) I am forced by necessity to refer to the
1868 Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty (that is the one that one of my own ancestors signed---at Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas)
Where the USA could not defeat the 'Plaines Tribes'--so they offered us a treaty; then did not have the integrity to maintain it.
So you see America; you have been loosing your 'empire' all along, you just chose to 'bleed to death' slowly, instead of a swifter more painless suicide.
Any way you look at it, you will soon be a 'footnote in history': and you will have done it to your selves.
Good Luck America, you really need it.
The greatest, most powerful military machine the world has ever seen, at a cost of a trillion dollars a year, so far has not "pacified" Baghdad. Borrowed money to be repaid DOUBLE with interest by the American Taxpayer well spent, wouldn't you agree? What about the loss of millions of lives you ask? Simple collateral damage, my friend, nothing to worry about.
exactly.
the USA (military or otherwise) in Iraq - and baghdad alone is the equivalent of
US puppet Karzai in Afghanistan:
where Karzai is "the Mayor of KABUL" and NOWHERE ELSE in afghanistan --
THE USA is the "mayor of baghdad"
but only as far as the IRAQis TOLERATE it - for the moment...until they show the REAL hand of the 6 thousand year old civilization's mettle in dealing with Foreigners who have the delusion to be their Lord which is what the USA thinks it is..
sooner rather than later has already come to pass, i'm afraid....and like the classic enablers/addicts many of us are, we go along as though all this is normal.... shopping, shopping and more shopping ---driving, driving and more driving---facebooking, twittering, blogging and managing to avoid the nitty gritty of actually looking our neighbors in the eye and figuring out how to snap out of the collective trance of the 'free market' supported by our bloated military and living beyond our fiscal, energy and environmental means. we (i'm in the us and perhaps it's as true elsewhere) have become a nation flabby when it comes to facing our current realities, numbed out as we are by our endless entertainments and devices to cling to for distraction from a very serious mess we cannot clean up because we choose to believe the lie that the government or the magic of the marketplace or the 'virtue of selfishness' is somehow going to sweep up so we can get back to our oh so entitled lifestyle to which we have grown accustomed. time to wake up, learn how to detach from our old dreams and recognize our connectedness with others and the vast suffering caused by our profligate waste of human potential on enterprises that serve only the almighty dollar and nothing of what is beautiful in our nature....share resources, gardening tips & tools, freely build and share UNcommodified skills & intellectual 'property'!!??! to reduce energy consumption, and say NO loud and clear to the corporate 'persons' & purveyors of empire-building and maintenance by cutting up the credit cards, showing up at meetings and learning to live as a cooperative earth-citizen and put our best minds to work exposing and correcting the suicidal ideation and delusion of our 'leadership' assiduously feng-shui-ing the titanic's deck chairs. Reality. it's where we live. it's who we are. it's paying attention.
Thanks for the 10 liquidation steps, but don't we really need to include an honest and transparent look at all sectors of our monstrous 'economy' and dismantle the globalized 'consumerism' "dream" along with military bases? we must together find a common language to replace the orwellian newspeak and advertspeak and deludedspeak that perpetuate and enable continued violence blind to the ultimate collateral damage, our dignity, decency and humanity.
If my own experience is any guide at all, change in our country will not happen until it is pretty much forced. My own example is that in order to create some life satisfaction and happiness, I had to accept that continuing to think as I had all my life would bring the same poor results. The bottom line was if I did not change I might as well walk off a bridge.
It seems our country must eventually work through a similar process...or just do nothing and walk off the bridge.
Then Rome shall burn.
Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
Dubya read "My Pet Goat" while NYC burned.
Obama hoped while selling the country to the health insurers, donating the treasury to the banksters, and letting the USA crash and burn in Afghanistan.
Chalmers Johnson is engaging in a lot of wishful thinking. The only way the us will pull out from its overseas bases and invasions is when it can no longer pay for it. His banko analogy is quite apt, and accurate, the usa is not preparing for its inevitable bankruptcy. Instead, your gov't is doing what Argentina did; printing money, proping up the corrupt, building a police state. In the end, you'll get the hyperinflation that they suffered, perhaps a war with China too (as by inflating the currency you'll be ripping them off).
I've never envied the citizens of the usa, but these days I do have pity for them for what their 'leaders' have wrought.
Johnson makes suggestions here, not predictions. His (reasonably open-ended) predictions go beyond what you've listed, and would not strike you as "wishful" unless you take him to wish for Armageddon.
I bought BLOWBACK and was back at the bookstore the next morning for the other two. Johnson's long experience with East Asia and US involvement there provides an unusual and increasingly critical perspective.
& here's to hoping out of the war with China at least, while I'm wishfully thinking.
By wishfull thinking I meant that he seems to suggest that the usa will behave rationally. That the gov't would even contemplate bankruptcy is 'defeatist', 'unAmerican', or some other such nonsense.
At least that's how I read the article.
OK. I'd say your reading of the gov't is sadly apt.
And I suppose that Johnson's writing at all and putting all the work he has clearly put into research implies some hope that some rationality or perception will appear somewhere. I'm thankful he goes through with it, though I'm sure he must feel he's getting the short end of the bet.
I think you'd really like the books, though, including on this point.
I think you'd really like the books, though, including on this point.
If I could afford them, I'd buy them... I do like his writings.
Lots of folks here apparently have never heard of buying cheap books on eBay.
I prefer second hand bookshops, I'd rather pay cash and be able to talk to the owner or the employees and maybe get some other books I'd otherwise not have read...
Be that as it may, the damned (US Empire) die hard.
Yeah--and the death throes are viosible in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Guatanamo and HONDURAS.
But they DO die.
And I am good with that.
We got the greatest the bestest the most noble the most virtous the best trained the most dedicated the purest the most feared the most loved Military in the History of the world and to infinity plus 1!!
Why does such childish BOASTING sell so well to ADULTS?
Sioux Rose
GW: Because the conditioning that lends a nation's thrall to Mars-rules begins young, and is pervasive! From "The National Anthem" with its "rockets red glare/the bombs bursting mid-air," to sports (team versus team, us versus them, as all-important basis for fueling emotionally-rich identification), to religion (God, our FATHER and a Bible that has far too many references to killing, AS IF this device serves a God's will), to diet (too much meat consumed, and many believe this fuels aggression), our media (movies that glorify war, sexualize macho heroes), added to basic angst, a fertile grounds if fomenting mass anger and funneling it into institutionalized aggression (military "adventures") is the goal. I'm sure I left out a few other tools that prove useful in shaping a nation's psyche, twisting it to define pride through its forces designed for killing, even when so much has gone broken or for broke in our world. No more ignorant, arrogant misuse of resources could be invented by the best of sci-fi equipped imaginations!
Since when are conservatives adults?
Support da troopies!!! RAH! RAH! RAH!
Chalmers Johnson speaks truth to power. His words are satisfying like a feast to a starving man. I can only guess, but I feel certain that at least half of the US population completely agrees with him, as does the vast majority of the rest of the world. It is the systemic corporatocracy and its
grip on the imagination of the people which continues to lead us down this path of destruction. We see what is happening more clearly now than ever. Entrenched attitudes, denial, entitlement, racism, chauvinism, greed and the lust for power and "security" are the ingredients which make up this perfect storm. We may be shouting into the wind, but we will not go quietly.....
Obama’s Military Is Spying on U.S. Peace Groups
Posted on Jul 28, 2009
By Amy Goodman
“Anti-war activists in Olympia, Wash., have exposed Army spying and infiltration of their groups, as well as intelligence gathering by the Air Force, the federal Capitol Police and the Coast Guard….The infiltration appears to be in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act preventing U.S. military deployment for domestic law enforcement and may strengthen congressional demands for a full-scale investigation of U.S. intelligence activities, like the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s….Larry Hildes, an attorney representing Washington activists, says the U.S. attorney prosecuting the cases against them, Brian Kipnis, specifically instructed the Army not to hand over any information about its intelligence-gathering activities, despite a court order to do so…. Which is why Dunn’s request to Olympia and the documents he obtained are so important….The military is supposed to be barred from deploying on U.S. soil, or from spying on citizens. Christopher Pyle, now a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, was a military intelligence officer.”
“Brendan Maslauskas Dunn asked the city of Olympia for documents or e-mails about communications between the Olympia police and the military relating to anarchists, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) or the Industrial Workers of the World (Dunn’s union). Dunn received hundreds of documents. One e-mail contained reference to a “John J. Towery II,” who activists discovered was the same person as their fellow activist “John Jacob.”…. Demands mount for information on and accountability for Vice President Dick Cheney’s alleged secret assassination squad, President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, and the CIA’s alleged misleading of Congress. But the spying in Olympia occurred well into the Obama administration (and may continue today). President Barack Obama supports retroactive immunity for telecom companies involved in the wiretapping, and has maintained Bush-era reliance on the state secrets privilege. Lee and Holt should take the information uncovered by Brendan Dunn and the Olympia activists and get the investigations started now.”
Read full story @:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090728_obamas_military_is_spying_on_us_peace_groups/
Welcome to 1984.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4675077383139148549
Chalmers Johnson,
Once again you are absolutely spot on.....It's too bad that the windbags inside the Beltway don't get this reality.....
I'm with Mordechai. These people will exploit us in every way possible to maintain the empire.
We've got the greatest 21st century collection of human garbage running the country and destroying the world. Their message is loud and clear. They don't care how the rest of us live or die.
The only thing they care about is staying in power.
Another reason: Our policies exacerbate the economic imbalance between the uber-wealthy and the rest of us. That undermines one-person one-vote and every other practice of democracy.
By continuing to spend our money on weapons, bases and mercenaries, we are further channeling our wealth (and thus power) into the hands of a small group of exceptionally selfish and ruthless people who own war related enterprises.
As they hold sway over our Congress and our resources, continuing to bankrupt ourselves to give them contracts is contributing to the demise of democracy here as well as around the world.
By the way - I recommend Chalmers Johnson's books. They are full of information. You will not think in the same way after reading them.
Joe
Increasingly, I consider anyone who has not read Chalmers Johnsons trilogy on the US empire as having considerable gaps in their understanding of where we as a people are today. Not that there aren't other equally incisive and eloquent voices disecting the empire, but Johnson's writing seems most approachable. But as with many prophetic voices it seems so difficult to get anyone but the folks already members of the choir to do some homework reading that might change their mind or shift their perspective in a basic way. Any experiences out there in getting some horses to water AND having them drink?
I have given or lent "Sorrows of Empire" to a few people. It is a lively, vivid, well-written and engaging book and well-accepted by those who are not already critics of excessive militarism.
Joe
I have the greatest respect for the work of Chalmers Johnson, but he knows better than to call the U.S.Naval Academy students "cadets."
They are midshipmen.
At West Point they are collectively the Corps of Cadets, and at Annapolis, the Brigade of Midshipmen.
"Midshipmen" you say. That may be easier to say than "Mercenary Fascist Baby Killer Trainees" but it does not change the fact.
Hit the nail
Johnson was a U.S. naval officer in the western Pacific during the early fifties.
One problem in getting popular support for curtailing military adventures is that people in all 50 states depend on the military for employment. Many poor families depend on the armed forces to employ their sons or daughters, to bring at least one paycheck into the family and keep the kids away from alcohol, drugs and crime. Many areas depend on bases and weapons plants for their local economies. They provide direct employment as well as indirect support in the form of customers for local business.
As we have allowed industry to falter and rust, exported jobs for decades, this is truly a severe structural problem.
My outline for solutions: re-tool factories and re-purpose military service. Factories can be used to build transportation facilities, subway cars, eco-friendly housing components etc. Contracts could go to universities to research how to build solar panels or supply water rather than building drones or spyware. While we are paying salaries of troops anyway, they could be used to help and build, rather than kill and destroy both at home and abroad. Private contracts should be curtailed, and the army take care of its own food services, construction, repair and support. That would allow for diversity of training and return veterans to to civilian life better prepared for work psychologically and technically.
I hope that local politicians who have to face the choice between funding imperialism or throwing people out of work in their districts, will sometimes come up with creative proposals to employ their constituents. Is there anyone out there who will be enough of a man (or woman) to go in that direction?
Joe
Better suggestions than most have.
Have you been promoted - from advisor to king? :)
Joe
"It's not a lie if you believe it." George Costanza
It's not an empire if you deny it.
We're not bankrupt if you ignore it.
And, on a side note: There is no war in Afghanistan or Iraq (and, hence, nothing to 'win') unless you've accepted that our Constitution and all laws, both domestic and international, are moot.
P.S - our 'leaders' certainly know all the history, yet they continue doing the wrong thing. So the question is: why?
The answer is, obviously: $$$
Jeevee
We become what we think about, so it behooves all of us to think CONSTANTLY of PEACE, PEACE, PEACE!!!
i mean - if the USA so much as provokes even more chaos and war in that region - it will be like a USA military of SITTING DUCKS. who will NEVER come home alive or intact - unless they get home as wards of the state or homeless or insane and become a new danger to the usa itself - IF they are let out alive by the arabs and others that get so sick of american meddling , and eventually find it is better for them to recognize their common civilizational ties - regardless of their quarrels - than to become the lackeyes of the USA with whom they have NO cultural or civilization ties and clearly just wants their national wealth.
does the USA really think those people in the middle east - with their very old civilizations are THAT stupid - that the USA can IMAGINE being their Lord and master and Dictator for LONG?
Obama, the Pentagon and US corporations are DREAMING. they'll be kicked out of there soon enough...
The biggest "Reasons To Liquidate THE Empire" you find here:
Read:“Collateral Damage” by E. P Heidner, part I and II.
>>> www.scribd.com/people/documents/2169400-ep-heidner <<<
and watch 'City of Empire':
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4675077383139148549
Our empire consists of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S. territories.
Anyone that would be king should name them from memory. Or close all of them.
Excellent, what great writing, reporting.
And particularly re the US's use of the planet as a "sexual playground," for it's henchmen abroad.
Thank You Chalmers Johnson.
The principles that stubbornly stick to our US of A are the last major obstacle in the way of the dominance of state-corporatism. Either the policies described by Prof. Chalmers are the conscious choices of USA-destroyers, or are the natural, unavoidable product of a system whose billions of individual choices can only produce the process of...what...what word? Disintegration? Waste? Death?
What?
Will we get another chance to get it right? Or maybe what is right will bloom out of the rubble.
"Our unwillingness to retrench, no less liquidate, represents a striking historical failure of the imagination."
Those who would take over the earth
And shape it to their will
Never, I notice, succeed.
The earth is like a vessel so sacred
That at the mere approach of the profane
It is marred
And when they reach out their fingers it is gone.
For a time in the world some force themselves ahead
And some are left behind,
For a time in the world some make a great noise
And some are held silent,
For a time in the world some are puffed fat
And some are kept hungry,
For a time in the world some push aboard
And some are tipped out:
At no time in the world will a man who is sane
Over-reach himself,
Over-spend himself,
Over-rate himself.
LaoTzu #29 600 BC
Great article, as usual, from Johnson.
The U.S. military is a sacred cow in the media and government circles. When budget cutting is mentioned, the big entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare are are always talked about and blamed for future deficits and insolvency; but never the military.
The military is the real reason for the bankruptcy of this country. The U.S. has been effectively bankrupt since WWII, when the federal debt ballooned from 41 billion to over 256 billion dollars during the war. The highest tax bracket was 92% in 1946. It is war, from WWI onward, that has caused high taxes and the tax revolt in this country-not entitlement programs.
The military and war have always been and will always be the downfall of empires. America is no different.
The Beer Summit is all the news today. Gates, Crowley, Obama meet to chat and patch things up, have a laugh or two, talk over issues, and maybe help heal some old wounds.
Why can't we have the same approach with foreign policy? Got some issues? let's get together over a beer and work it out. It may not be good for the MIC but think of all the revenue generated from sales in micro brews.
sierra7
"No matter how bad, how horrendous, how ruinous things become, any government run by Republicans or Democrats will fight not just tooth and nail, but to the death to maintain the empire."
That, my friends is the bottom line to all this....I'm very familiar with Chalmers Johnson's writings over the years and he is right on the money.
But, like the above quote from another commenter, neither major party will give up their power without THE PEOPLE TAKING IT!
We are a thoroughly economically corrupt nation; an "empire" that will have lasted less time than it took for the Roman Empire to historically "decline" (some 750 years).
I've just finished another good book, "The Dark Side" by Jane Mayer about the criminality of the Bush Administration. (Not to diminish the cooperation of the Dems throughout). The book is well "noted" and that is what is so disconcerting. If after the criminals int he Bush Admin can get away without being indicted for war crimes and crimes against the Constitution, then this country is going down the tubes!
Too many Americans cannot get their minds around the fact that we are a rogue nation, a terrorist nation, a bullying nation, and one that doesn't quite frankly, give a damn for anybody else (including it's own citizens).
Do I have any suggestions? Well, yes. Remember what some European countries do when things get bad for its citizens and they have to "fight" for their rights.......They still use the "general strike" powers of the people to get "things back in line." (And, of course we make fun of them for being "socialists" and other derogatory words that are just too inane to repeat)
No people in history has engaged their governments in real change without direct action. Without direct action those that govern will never pay attention. They will increase their stranglehold on the citizens and crush them ruthlessly unless held accountable.
When will we hold our government accountable?
(I'm 78, a 5 year veteran and a registered non-partisan voter)
And, I remember the Great Depression.
We are sliding into another one........
enough
This article contains a bunch of pseudo science. We devote about 4% of our GDP to defense. That percentage is the norm in many other countries. If Cuba can afford to have 4% of its GDP on defense so can we.
Also I sense a huge overlap lately between progressives and libertarians. Our national debt is about 73% of our GDP. Again this is about the norm for developed countries. Also after WWII our national debt was 114% of our GDP. We didn't go bankrupt then. As our economy grows and our needs for a greater money supply increase our debt becomes more manageable. A simple knowledge of finance reveals there is no crisis.
We have global interests. Our foreign bases ensure no one place is absolutely out of reach.
Hey, guess who July 30th, 2009 7:30 pm, you forgot to mention that Hitler lives in a submarine off the coast of Argentina.
The recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are largely funded through supplementary spending bills outside the Federal Budget, so they are not included in the military budget figures. In addition, the United States has black budget military spending, which is not listed as Federal spending and is not included in published military spending figures. Other military-related items, like maintenance of the nuclear arsenal and the money spent by the Veterans Affairs Department, are not included in the official budget. Thus, the total amount and the % of GDP spent by the United States on military spending is higher.
The 2005 U.S. military budget is almost as much as the rest of the world's defense spending combined and is over eight times larger than the official military budget of China.
During FY 2008, the U.S. government spent nearly $800 billion on defense and homeland security, approximately 32% of tax collections of $2.5 trillion.
"We have global interests". Now who said that before?
Oy.
Joe
You're not taking into account the unfunded liabilities owed by the us taxpayer. See iousa.org, they've got a great 1 hour documentary about the issue.
Top of the line writing from Chalmers Johnson.
Thank you, Chalmers Johnson, for keeping at the struggle against the plague upon the earth (and the earth includes the United States!) that the U.S. empire is, for continuing to expose and indict it, and for promoting its abolition.
It is very important to maintain alive the discussion of Empire and its impact upon the world. Indeed, too few people really know what it is all about. People need to be educated about Empire and the liberating prospect of its abolition.
An abolitionist movement needs to be formed.
Tommytoons
I fear for America, not the government, but her people, we are sliding into a new reality that will mean one of two things, the demise of Democracy into a facist state ruled by the Corporations, or a tremendous revolt will take place and the loss of life will be great and the battle will break this country apart, we will live through (I hope) into a dark future where there will not be winners and loosers, but another "Dark Ages", with the Beacon of America as a great nation of hope, extingushed.
My prayer is that I am wrong, but the signs indicate that I and others are bracing for a very long and dark Night of the Soul.
The USA has now become so infected with the worthless, the criminal, the greedy and the insane that it most likely will have to implode to hopefully be rebuilt by people with the ideals of an intelligent, just and lawful country but as Johnson has said in his books and on a dvd interview, he thinks it will most probably not happen, because the people in this country are so controlled and dumbed down by a subverted media, an incompetent religious fanaticism and traitorous congress, president and judiciary and a corporate intra-state that probably has the scariest plan of all of just totally cleaning out the coffers and leaving this country a smoking ruin as something that might just waken people to the disaster whereby they just might rise up against those that have without hesitation, remorse or concern, gone about robbing and destroying this country that the european white men stole from the native inhabitants.
And no matter how much the people such as Chalmers Johnson, Jane Mayer, Andrew Bacevich, Naomi Klein, Greg Palast and a host of other authors research and bring to light those crimes by those who are now not afraid to commit more destruction of this country, I believe the major mass of the people just don't have it in them to even speak out much less taken some actionable actions to regain what we are losing, they just think it isn't true what is happening and that someone will appear out of the blue to fix it for the rest of them and/or us; which silently says 'they want it, but they won't pay the price'.
TRUE JUSTICE IS SERVED WHEN THE RIGHT PEOPLE ARE PUNISHED FOR THEIR CRIMES!!!!!!
samosamo -- i fear that , about the "masses" in general - you are only TOO RIGHT. i really fear that that is indeed the case.
that the TIGHTER the shackles get around americans - because of their own fears (very palpable especially about "first things first" - such as their pocket books, where to get the next meal or medicine...how to get this for the kids, or get that extra check to pay for this or that bill...etc.)
and the FEAr to LOSE what LITTLE grasp they still have at what they STILL believe is the "american dream" or "american WAY" (all the beliefs about freedom and why they have to be "SECURED") ...
that - as you say - through whatver reason: fear, indifference, too caught up with just surviving and getting by, busy with putting food on the table, busy with trying to be on a "higher" financial footing..-- and of course not wanting ANY of that to be DISTURBED by "threats" -
americans WILL let this happen..and shrug that there is nothing they can do about it...
this is what they will mean when they say "you gotta do what you gotta do"........
whether go on as the chattels that they are - or even be "informants" ....anything -- just to preserve what little they have that they fear they will lose from "those threats"...
as TOLD to them by their masters through the Megaphone of the Corporations - in which their jobs depend - or the State apparatus
samosamo and teddy,
I share the gloomy outlook in regard to the apathy of the general populace. It is a society kept under control with idle consumerism on the shoulders of the rest of the planet. The two party oligarchy that manages the profit and wealth flow for a small elite has been able to keep the voting masses in a state of conned acquiescence and convenient ambivalism. Common lifestyle was provided by loan, education is geared around producing useful subjects rather than freethinking, the masses were kept occupied with inane entertainment, silenced by welfare payments and manipulated by corporate controlled mass media. And preoccupied by hope-inducing wishful hogwash that we have a choice under this system. Don’t like Blue? Just vote Red.
We have seen the exploding of the bubble but everybody waits for the bang.
I believe it has to come a hell of a lot worse before a critical mass is reached. And it will.
Therefore, be patient and don’t resign. More and more people will speak out. Just like yourself.
Won't vote blue and I won't vote red anymore, only 3rd parties and that is a problem itself because the msm public's IQ won't allow the tv veggies to consider any option outside of red or blue.
Nazi's hitler and geobbels didn't do a better job and with the university of america, I believe, through the military we are teaching other 3rd world countries how to do the same so they can maintain a similar vegged out population.
My advice to you, start drinking heavily.
For my self, I am already drinking heavily compared to past times but I would prefer to smoke pot if it wasn't such a big thing to bust people in this area of the USA that I live for smoking it .
I just want to know and keep up with the reality of this criminal ponzi scheme, and as stated, I believe there are small chances of recoverying a USA lifestyle so many have become acustomed to, be it minimal effort for larger that normal gains but all that is disappearing fast.
But just think about it, all it would take is for either the saudis to start trading oil in euros or china, japan or any of the other major nations holding on to our debts to decide to start trading oil in euros or to pay up on our debt to the countries we owe for our economy to totally collapse by the end of the day.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
To educate oneself about Empire, aside from the masterful volumes of Chalmers Johnson's "Blowback" trilogy, I recommend the following:
"National Project on Foreign Military Bases," at the Web site of American Friends Service Committee, http://www.afsc.org/cambridge/ht/d/sp/i/72158/pid/72158
There, you will find the proceedings of the first (to my knowledge, at least) conference devoted to Empire, "Security Without Empire: National Organizing Conference on Foreign Military Bases," held at American University, Washington, D.C., Feb. 27–Mar. 2, 2009.
Read at least the important "Initial Conference Report" (prepared by John Lindsay-Poland, Gwyn Kirk, David Vine and Joseph Gerson), which is the first item under the photograph at the top of the page. On that page, you will also find a map of all the bases' locations around the world.
Catherine Lutz, ed., “The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle Against U.S. Military Posts” (New York University Press, 2009). See Chalmers Johnson's very informative review of the book at http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20090514_
chalmers_johnson_on_the_cost_of_empire/
Catherine Lutz, "Obama's Empire: An Unprecedented Network of Military Bases That is Still Expanding," posted at Common Dreams, July 30, 2009
David Vine, "Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia" (Princeton University Press, 2009)
It is very important to become knowledgeable about Empire. That will form the basis of a gradual public disclosure of its functions, extent, misdeeds, malfeasance, disastrous impact on ecosystems, its huge wastefulness, and astronomical costs to the nation and the citizenry; this, in turn, should give rise to a public discussion and critique of it, and suggestions for its abolition.
One cannot discuss Empire without taking stock of at least its basics features (locations of bases, cost, number of troops, functionaries, etc.) and workings.
The exposition and discussion of Empire might begin the process of undoing the sacred cow status of the military in this country.
"We Can No Longer Afford Our Postwar Expansionism."
Mr. Chalmers,
The two other reasons for dismantling our overseas empire bases also begin with the word "WE". If "WE" means the elite power brokers that set this thing up, then don't bother to write this stuff. The elite are still making money off this deal, thank you. They don't want to change it. So it bankrupts "the country", so what? The elite will rant and rave about greed and lack of responsibility by us guttersnipes and try to tax us even more while Oprah teaches us the joys of living out of a shoe box (Hey, it's deductible because you can shine shoes on it! Smile, the SECRET says you are responsible for attracting bad events and negative vibrations so perk up!).
So I have to respectfully ask you. WHAT IS THIS "WE" SHIT? Exactly when did "we" authorize these bases?
At any rate, the reason I put your first reason in quotes is that I violently disagree with the premise that there EVER was a time that "WE" could afford postwar expansion or any other expansion into other people's affairs, for that matter.
Perhaps you meant that the elite could once afford it and they can no longer do so. Perhaps. But I don't think trying to convince a rich gambler to stop gambling will work. The gambler has to lose and hit bottom before he even begins to question his behavior. And if he's an arrogant person, he'd rather die than admit he was wrong. It's a pity.
"WE" AGREE WHOLE-HEARTEDLY.
Brother!
"Nothing we do will compel 125 million Muslims in Pakistan to make common cause with a United States in league with the two states that are unambiguously anti-Muslim: Israel and India."
This statement can only come from a clueless American. This may hold true for Israel but India has the third largest Muslim population in the world and despite the recent Hindu-Muslim dustup, the two communities live in peace. Indians are certainly not unambiguously anti-Muslim !! There are more Muslims in India than any other place in the world besides Pakistan and Indonesia probably. In fact the recent elections was a slap in the face to Hindu fundamentalist parties in India. Does any of this even resonate with idiots in charge of policy !
The problem with Pakistan is that its run by Generals who have absolutely no interest in democratic representation ... and this suits us just fine.
Chalmers Johnson wrote, "The sum is so immense that it will take several generations for American citizens to repay the costs of George W. Bush's imperial adventures -- if they ever can or will", and I'd say that that's slightly lacking. Instead, we should include Obama, in which case what this quote says would, instead, read, "The sum is so immense that it will take several generations for American citizens to repay the costs of George W. Bush's and Barack Obama's imperial adventures -- if they ever can or will".
The rest is not critical to the purpose of this post; only expounding a litle on the above correction that I beleive is due.
Furthermore, who was Bush's brain, because he evidently had little? Meanwhile, the same can't be said, not to nearly the same degree anyway, about Obama. Bush's brain, remember, was karl Rove; he was given this title by [many] analysts and writers or analyst writers (whatever), and they were right.
Additionally, it's like Major Doug Rokke said in a presentation at a 9-11 Truth gathering or conference and which is recorded in a video at Youtube entitled, "9/11... Hello!". He therein states that it's not really Bush that we should focus on, but CHENEY, which is something I and some other people, perhaps many enough, said numerous times several years ago. As I had written several years ago and plenty of times over probably a couple of years, reducing repetition since, Bush wore the title of "President", but the real one was sitting behind a slightly lesser title, the one of VP. By doing that, Cheney managed to stay out of the public view much more than he could've done if he had been President, which, if he ever became that, would surely remind a lot more of Hitler than we can say about Bush. Cheney would not have been elected if he had run for President, or I doubt he would've been, anyway; however, putting this aspect aside, being VP instead of P gave Cheney a certain point or positioning that was advantageous to him. After all, he very much controlled the presidency; certainly more than Bush Jr ever did.
Obama's very dangerous though. He surely knows [enough] of what's really going on and evidently has a considerably greater intellect than Bush Jr does or ever will. The most dangerous criminals are not the dumb ones! We should know or realise that!
Chalmers Johnson is evidently putting the blame on Bush Jr only because he's the person who nominally wore the title of President, while he was a puppet more than anything else. The imperialist wars also are not Bush Jr's or Obama's, really; because while they're Presidents, former and present, they don't really do the top decision-making. There are MUCH more powerful people who see to it that whoever is U.S. President does as told or else ... "bye bye" is what happens, one way or an (or the) other.
It's superficial to place the blame on Bush and I will guess that Chalmers Johnson would probably, if not surely, agree, if this was posed to him in a respectful question. It's superficial, but is also very easy to write and say, enough that many people seem to have gotten into a habit of skipping or omitting the [details]; those I'm referring to or explaining. And it's surely or certainly unintentional when done by people like Chalmers Johnson, who doesn't try to whitewash Cheney or any other of the USA's white collar political criminals, plutocrats; etcetera. Chalmers Johnson is among the people who DO NOT believe the "official story" on the 9-11 attacks, so he's another member of the overall 9-11 Truth-searchers movement, if it should be called a movement. He appears in some related video-recorded interviews, including for the European documentary entitled, "Zero: An investigation into 9/11" (in which US Army Lt Col Robert Bowman and possibly other Americans also appear). No one has really blamed Bush for the 9-11 attacks, but a lot of focus has been placed on Cheney, some on Rumsfeld; and enough on some other people associated with that overall U.S. Administration.
Bush had Karl Rove for a brain; never wrote any of his speeches, and was even caught wearing an electronic listening or communication device under his coat during one of his speeches; because he could not be "trusted" to speak as his stringer wielders (handlers) needed him to speak. That was a little peculiar matter caught on video recording by some news media cameraman.
Who writes Obama's speeches? I'd guess that he's capable and probably does, while "of course" having these reviewed for approval before presenting them to the public; for he must, the rulers dictate, remain within certain drawn borders of speech when addressing the public. But does he do his own speech writing? Maybe he also doesn't; while I think he probably does and that he surely has the ability to do so.
Presidents, all politicians, should do their own speech writing(s)! Thank you very much.
I'm not done yet with the above post; although, as stated in the above post following the first paragraph of it, this isn't critical stuff I'm writing.
Like Clinton had to obey the real ruling "elites", Obama also does. Every US President must be obedient, according to the "code of conduct for US Presidents" decided by the real ruling "elites". Their rule is that the US President must "shape up or be efaced from the presidency" and possibly world; depending on what measures "need" to be applied to depose of the person who's deemed to no longer be fit for the presidency.
And these wars, according to Major Doug Rokke and other respectable people for their knowledge, didn't start to be planned by the Bush Jr administration. In the aforementioned video with Major Rokke speaking at some 9-11 Truth meeting or conference, he therein states that the war on Iraq began to be planned by the U.S. Administration in 1995, and since the Taliban terminated the secret talks about the oil pipeline deal in 1998, well, that set them up for targeting from then onward, too.
These wars of imperialism do not "belong" to any particular President. It all "belongs" to the real ruling "elites" of the government of the USA. Americans can, however, blame themselves for electing WEAK, morally weak in the case of people like Obama and Clinton, and intellectually as well as morally weak people such as Bush Jr, to the US Presidency. Oops, Bush Jr was not elected in 2000; that's also true.
Shall we blame Bush Jr for that "little" matter or "mishap" in 2000, too? Or shall we blame the people who made that non-elected appointment or appointing happen? The latter seems like a good idea and the right approach; imo.
War makes our minds, thoughts and therefore communication a little foggy, sometimes. Bush Jr's war? Only because he was nominally wearing the title of "Mr President".
Similarly for Obama, only he has more intellect than Bush and therefore is more guilty than Bush, imo. Nevertheless, while they're both guilty and deserve prosecutions, they're not the real war-makers and -continuers. The people who are definitely should be facing war crimes trials, BIG TIME.
They're both guilty, but neither of them are the real war-makers. They should still be prosecuted for their war crimes, but the real war-makers should be prosecuted much more strongly. That surely will never happen, but this doesn't mean that they should not be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.
Chalmers Johns wrote:
"May 2009, the Office of Management and Budget predicted that in 2010 the United States will be burdened with a budget deficit of at least $1.75 trillion. This includes neither a projected $640 billion budget for the Pentagon, nor the costs of waging two remarkably expensive wars. The sum is so immense that it will take several generations for American citizens to repay the costs of George W. Bush's imperial adventures -- if they ever can or will. It represents about 13% of our current gross domestic product (that is, the value of everything we produce)."
Is the 13% of GDP only for the military spending, or that and the war spending, costs? If so, then 13% may be accurate, but if not, then the real percentage may possibly be much higher. That would depend on what calculations are performed, however what I have in mind is that the USA's GDP consists of a [phantom] component or characteristic, and people wanting to know what this is about can learn about it by doing a Web search using, f.e., "phatom US GDP", with the quotes, or without the them.
Paul Craig Roberts, who plenty of "leftists" would decry because of his association with the Repub. Party, has a couple of articles in which he explains the phantom GDP, and there are other authors who've also written about this; although, I don't know if they all use the word "phantom". I recall having read about this topic by a female author who had one or more articles in which she wrote about this posted at counterpunch.org, but doing a Web search on that website doesn't turn up any links to any articles by female authors.
In the following article, PCR writes of "phantom income", while in the second article, he refers to "phantom US GDP".
"No Escape from War and Unemployment",
by Paul Craig Roberts, ICH, Jan 12, 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7784
"The Truth Comes Out About Offshoring",
by Paul Craig Roberts, Jun 12, 2007
http://vdare.com/roberts/070612_offshoring.htm
Assuming that Chalmers Johnson is referring to the GDP figure officially stated by the U.S. government, which is surely flawed due to not accounting for the phantom aspect of the figure, what I quoted at the start of this post from his article is an understatement; for the phantomness in the officially stated GDP definitely is real. If correct about the assumption I just stated, his 13% should really be considerably, if not much, higher; I believe.
In essence, he's evidently right; just that he'd need to adjust the 13% [upwards]; plenty.
Re. "A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors" referred to in the article's 10 Steps To ..., people wishing for excerpts from the book can find a surely good sampling through the following Web page, which is an index for five or six parts.
Hidden Terrors: the truth about U.S. police operations in Latin America, by A.J. Langguth, Pantheon Books, 1978, paper
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Torture/Hidden_Terrors.html
Since the topic's of interest to me, I figured to do an immediate Web search on the TWT Web site, where the Google search also provided a link to a short 1979 article by the same author and for the NYT, a piece entitled, "Torture's Teachers". It's very short though, so .... The above book excerpts should be very good, for TWT is good at providing a considerable list of excerpts for or from books.
Chalmers Johnson wrote, "8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in our armed forces by radically scaling back our reliance on civilian contractors, private military companies, and agents working for the military outside the chain of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. ...".
"US Blackwater Nightmare for Peshawaris",
by Aamir Latif, IOL Correspondent, July 29, 2009
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=56486
EXCERPT:
PESHAWAR — Already shaken by a spate of unrest in their homeland, people in Peshawar now have another source of fear on their city’s streets, the notorious US security firm Blackwater.
"We are deeply scared by their presence and movement as they have posed a serious threat to our lives and properties," Ahmed Yar Khan, a local businessman, told IslamOnline.net.
According to intelligence sources, the company, ..., has set up different stations in Peshawar and its vicinity.
Sporting black gaggles and carrying sophisticated assault rifles, Blackwater members move freely in Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), and its adjoining districts.
They are often seen in their black-colored armored vehicles carrying diplomatic number plates.
"Officially, Blackwater is providing security to the US, European and Afghan diplomats and officials working on various development projects financed by the US government in federally administered tribal areas," a senior intelligence official told IOL, requesting anonymity for not being authorized to discuss the issue with the media.
But residents say that Blackwater agents spur fear and awe, with many of them openly standing guard on the streets and behaving rudely with the locals.
"If they are stuck in a traffic jam, they don’t allow any vehicle to come near them. And if someone mistakenly does that, they shout and point guns at them," fumed Khan.
Some residents have even filed complaints with the authorities over mistreatment by Blackwater members, but officials turned deaf ears.
"Nothing has so far happened despite several complaints," Khan lamented. "It seems as if these streets have been sold out to Blackwater."
...
Taliban Showdown
Peshawar residents also fear a possible showdown between Taliban groups and Blackwater.
"We have sent a detailed report to the higher authorities that the free movement of Blackwater members is posing a serious threat to the security of Peshawar," the senior intelligence official said.
One main task for Blackwater recently was tracking down Taliban fighters.
They are reportedly running a spy network in the tribal belt with the aim of hunting down Taliban.
"We have concrete information that mercenaries are involved in covert operations ranging from distribution of funds among anti-Taliban tribesmen to hiring of former military officers and commandoes to work for them," said the intelligence official.
Blackwater has also hired the services of some local security agencies to work for them in some of the province’s areas where white-skinned agents cannot enter, he added.
"Taliban may carry out suicide bombings in the residential areas, where they (Blackwater members), are stationed."
Some 18 people were killed and 46 injured on June 9 in a suicide attack at Pearl Continental Hotel Peshawar, which was believed to be a headquarters for Blackwater.
The US embassy in Islamabad denied the killing of any Blackwater members in the attack.
But government and intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the deaths of several agents.
Some residents are so fearful of troubles because of the presence of Blackwater that they decided to leave Peshawar.
"We are trying to sell our house, but no one is ready to buy even at a much cheaper price," said Khan, the local businessman.
"We are sure that the day is very near when a suicide bomber will rock our area because of them."
END OF EXCERPT
I came across an article over the past few months and didn't read, but it was about casaualties among U.S. forces, including from the private "security" (we know it's mercenary) cies, and we can or should realise that we most probably aren't told of the true number of U.S. troops killed, but the private "security" cies' members' or killers' deaths don't need to be officially counted and/or don't need to be reported to the public.
So when told that there were [no] Blackwater casualties, we don't know if it's true, or not; unless obtaining proof to the contrary from other sources.
The world will be better off without them, no doubt, but I figured to mention the above anyway. We probably should be informed of their casualties, instead of only those or some of those of the U.S. military.
George C. Brown - Chalmers Johnson is one of the most knowledgeable and precise voices in the country - - but how many people really pay any attention to him? His reasoning and logic are clear, and every bit of what he says is true. It is a pity that once again, as with so many issues, Congress manages to turn a deaf ear to anyone but the lobbyists and the big money greedheads who come running with cash to promote their favorite interests. We need more clear thinkers in Congress, and fewer of the kind we have.
What will be our demise? Will it be the black hole of Afghanistan? Or will it be the worldwide establishment of military bases? An inadequate health care remedy? If only the very rich survive, who be left upon which they can feed?
"To repeat the main message of this essay, we must give up our inappropriate reliance on military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy objectives."
The past 30 year decline and now collapse of U.S. capitalism has been the root cause of using imperialism to "achieve foreign policy objectives". The neo-cons recognized this economic decline of U.S. capitalism and thus proposed the "Project for the New American Century" to retain and greatly expand corporate profits and individual wealth of the ruling elite.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), the neo-cons, in their PNAC Statement of Principles, realized that by imposing this vast military superiority on the world was the only hope for maintaining or expanding U.S. corporate profit. The PNAC agenda became the foreign policy of the Bush (and now Obama).
The seemingly irrational and destructive "foreign policy objectives" are symptoms, not causes, of collapsed capitalism. These imperialist symptoms of economic collapse cannot be altered or changed by rational arguments and proposals. The root cause of the U.S. global imperialism is the collapse of the traditional U.S. economic position and the effects of globalization of the economy.
To achieve the rational goal of ending imperialism, stated so well by Chalmers Johnson, the dismantling and end to U.S. and global capitalist economics is essential. Capitalism intrinsically promotes wars for profit for a tiny minority. This ruling elite is now seeking profit by looting the domestic economy by destroying all tax supported social institutions (public health, public education, etc.) essential to the economic survival of the vast majority of working people. The Wall Street banking "bailouts" at the expense of the people are just more symptoms of run-amok ganster capitalism.
Capitalism must be ended and a transition to a socialist economy that serves the economic needs the majority is now essential to the economic survival of humanity.
Read the daily World Socialist Web Site at http://www.wsws.org
"It is instead ignoring the meaning of its precipitate economic decline and flirting with insolvency."
We're no longer flirting with insolvency, alas. Under Reagan we became betrothed and under Bush we consummated the union. Now I think we're just waiting for the product of this union, Collapse, to come to term.
Yep, I'm a "doomer."
The US government now acts as a purely tyrannical government, eliminating those programs originally created to enhance it's citizens' lives and replacing them with militarism, warfare, and domestic repression through spying along with an increasing police state and prison system. It's clear that this trend is eliminating both dissent and social welfare programs. Johnson correctly notes that empires exist at the expense of its citizens.
We (The People) need to fire the idiots that continue to spend our money on these atrocities. Otherwise we must recognize our own compliance, even if it is based on ignorance. The fact that we continue to willingly fund this by dutifully paying taxes, is astounding. That guy in the White House works for US, not the other way around. We often seem to forget this simple fact. I keep imagining what would happen if no one filed their tax returns next year, and instead joined the slow money movement. Corporate structure would fall and local farms would expand. We would be getting back to the values we were raised to believe in, all without government intervention. We don't need them, but they sure need us to believe we do.
When Fidel Castro marched into Havana, one of his first acts was to order the execution of two of his own soldiers for the rape of civilian women - but he was just a "godless Commie," wasn't he?
So unlike god's own holy warriors of the almighty USofA!!!
California was living on I.O.U.s. Michigan,s auto industry is on life support. The food kitchens are running short on food.Forty-seven million of our people are without health insurance.
In the face of all of the above we are spending 250 billion dollars a year to maintain our empire. Something has to give. Perhaps take a lesson from Churchill or DeGaulle.
We all must realize that "It Is Over". The USA has been destroyed mostly from within but also a little help from it's so called friends. I can think of one in particular that has been most effective in it's hatred of freedom especially the religious variety. However greed has played a major roll, not it's labor and unions or it's so called illegal aliens. This country has been destroyed by it's major international conglomerates and it's wealthy leaders. Their greed and their attempts to blame everyone else is the cause. Aiding the cause bought and paid for politicians including various Presidents and so called other leaders. It would be of serious benefit to the remnants if the USA just plain quit! No other religious or any other groups want anything to do with us especially the Idiots known as Christians particularly those known as "BORN AGAIN" crack pots. Please leave quietly you will not be missed.