Worldview: American Empire

by A Concerned Citizen

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Revised 25 August 2008

Introduction
Motivation
Remarks on Israel
Remarks on Islam

Links
Books and Websites
General Articles

Topics
CIA Activities
Vietnam War
Other Cold War
NATO & The Balkans
Israel & the Palestinians

Corporate Influence
Media & Propaganda
Neocons & Israel Lobby
Religious Right
Libertarians
Radical Theories
Civil Liberties
War Crimes
Economics
Miscellaneous

Investigations
Preliminary Notes
Noam Chomsky
US and Asia
Militarization of the USA

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American Empire: Introduction

Motivation (26 Mar 07): As my disenchantment with the Iraq war has grown, I have been stimulated to read all kinds of online articles about American foreign policy, including from sources I used to consider too 'radical'. It may be that a Noam Chomsky goes too far in comparing America to Nazi Germany, if indeed he did, but it does seem increasingly clear to me that his basic point is correct: that we have been meddling in other countries, often violently, sometimes illegally. The hawk — or even someone who passes for a foreign policy 'centrist' in this country — will argue that we sometimes had to play rough because our adversaries like the Soviet Union were so much worse. My basic response is that we should only resort to military action when faced with a direct and verifiable threat, or when invited by a genuine and decent democracy, which has the full support of its people. Instead, we have supported many repressive and corrupt governments, intervened militarily on flimsy pretexts, and generally arrogated to ourselves the mission of world policeman.

This was justified for decades by conjuring up a Manichean threat of Communism vs. Democracy, which has recently been superseded by Islam vs. Democracy. No doubt the threats have existed, but my basic impression is that these threats have been exaggerated and portrayed as more homogeneous and dangerous than they really were (or are). Intelligence has often been recklessly contaminated with speculation, as recently demonstrated by the Iraq WMD fiasco, which should shock any conscientious American but seems well on its way to being forgotten by the powers-that-be, if not by the general public. Moreover, we have often behaved in an arrogant manner and resorted to double-standards, always justified by our assumption of moral superiority.

It is particularly distressing that the Democrats have habitually been as willing to play this game as the Republicans. During the Cold War, a major driving force was the badgering from the Republicans regarding the alleged weakness of liberals on foreign policy. In more recent years, it seems that the right-wing Jewish lobbies have become sacred cows, and currently it so happens that even the 'antiwar' Democratic candidates have basically given President Bush a green light to attack Iran, notwithstanding the antiwar verdict of the recent midterm elections. This is all rather disturbing to me (and I do support the existence of Israel but not the occupation of the West Bank).

I have already collected various articles on this topic and written a few of my own. Now I would like to gather them here, in order to address the issue in a more systematic manner. It is one thing to realize that we have not always been as virtuous as we like to suppose, but it is another to draw the precise line of blame, which requires a serious knowledge of history. I will never have that knowledge, but I can infer reasonable conclusions based on a judicious analysis and comparison of sources. This will take some time, so for the foreseeable future this must be considered a work in progress. This first stage will consist mostly of transferring known articles and finding new ones.

NOTE (26 Mar 07): As of today, the articles are tilted to the Left, since criticism of American foreign policy is a topic dear to its heart. For the foreseeable future, I will concentrate on this literature, as it is new to me. Eventually, I will try to find as many good examples of rebuttals as I can. Then I will draw my own conclusions. Please do not assume that my selection of links necessarily reflects my personal views.

UPDATE (29 Mar 07): My initial impression of Chalmers Johnsons is very good. He is a multifaceted professor (economics, Asia, military matters, foreign affairs) who served as an officer in the military and was a Cold Warrior for many years, but who has recently changed his mind about America's behavior in the world. So far, he seems quite reasonable and fair in his views. Yet he is allied with people like Chomsky, who are more controversial. I probably agree with most of Chomsky's main points about American imperialism, yet he sometimes seems too harsh on America and on Israel. He has allegedly likened both to the Nazis, which seems excessive. Our intentions were surely better, based more on a desire for stability than outright plunder. But I'll keep an open mind; nobody is virtuous by fiat. So as I said above, the anti-imperialistic movement may have a problem with a net unjustified bias against the US and Israel, even if many of its individual criticisms are fair enough. Or it may not. For the moment, Chalmers is my guiding light, unless and until I have a good reason to think otherwise. (Here is a sample of his work.)

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Remarks on Israel (29 Mar 07): I've started reading some of the 'radical' material below, and already I see a problem. Thus, I have to make a few quick comments, even if they can only be incomplete and superficial at this point. On the one hand, I basically agree that the US is behaving in an increasingly imperialistic fashion ever since WWII. We have erected and supported repressive governments, and we have invaded countries on false or inadequate pretexts. My basic principle is that we should never attack unless there is an imminent and verifiable threat, or unless a decent and truly democratic friend calls for our assistance against a comparable attack. So far, I am with these 'left-wing radicals', whose opinion seems increasingly that of the American people, according to a recent Gallup poll. However, I also notice that many of these same radicals are harsh on Israel, and that makes be feel a bit uneasy.

So let me express my general opinion at the moment about Israel, even though my knowledge is still incomplete. First, I do support Israel's existence, though I realize that it is problematic in many respects. It may be easy for me to say, but I think that the Arabs have shown a very bad attitude. In 1947, the UN tried to divide the land of Palestine according to demography. Israel accepted, but the Arabs rejected and soon attacked the new country. Jews do have a right to the land, based on history and their continual presence, which is nonetheless rendered murky by centuries of empire and colonialism. I have written on this already. At any rate, the Israelis are established by now, and it is simply unconscionable for the Palestinians to continue to demand the Israel be completely eliminated, as some terrorist groups still do in their charters.

That said, I must blame the Israelis too for their arrogant stubbornness on the settlements. They may claim that the Palestinians 'never miss and opportunity to miss an opportunity', but they have continued to provoke the Palestinians with ever expanding settlements, just to please their right wing. A new problem is the wall, which snakes deep into the West Bank, according to some reports. I could agree with a wall that cleanly followed the 1967 borders; that would have been quite understandable, given the horrible suicide bombings of the last 10 years or so. But when the wall snakes in to protect the settlements, then that means that the Israelis really intend to stay and take over the West Bank, which makes any peace process an exercise in hypocrisy. It seems that the Israeli government should have bitten the bullet, evacuated the settlements, built the wall along the 1967 border, and let that be the effective solution to the problem. One cannot expect the Palestinians to be satisfied with several disconnected Bantustans.

(NOTE: The preceding is based on my understanding to date, so please leave me room to revise my opinions in the light of new knowledge. For instance, I just read that the 1967 borders would be too dangerous for Israel, and I am not sure what maps to believe anyway. My point is that the Palestinians can never be expected to settle for anything like Bantustans, nor should Israelis continually encroach on their land.)

I am also bothered by the hawkish elements of the Israel lobby in America. Now note that I explicitly do not say the 'Jewish Lobby', since I am well aware that there is a great diversity of opinion among American Jews. Indeed, a recent poll shows that the overwhelming majority of American Jews are against the Iraq war, which is encouraging indeed. However, right-wing lobbies such as AIPAC clearly hold a disproportionate and disturbing influence over the American political process, as recently demonstrated by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's unseemly capitulation on language in the new Iraq bill that would have required President Bush to get Congressional approval before attacking Iran, as required by the Constitution.

So please remember that I am trying to walk a tightrope here. On the one hand, I do not wish for America to become any kind of an empire, as this most likely will trample the rights of other nations and lead to a loss of liberty at home. It will only stir up more trouble than it is worth to try to be the world's policeman with anything like our customary arrogance and ignorance. Instead, we should just work quietly and respectfully with true democracies. At the same time, I wish to support Israel but not those aspects of its policies that I find troublesome and incompatible with a sincere search for peace. Consider also the recent war against Lebanon. At the time, I felt that Israel was entirely justified, as I said on my Israel page. However, I now wonder if the excursion into Lebanon was not excessive and unwise, even if Israel was provoked when some soldiers were kidnapped and some missiles fired. I am still wondering about this and am trying to learn more. I will be dismayed if the leading intellectuals and political groups who argue against American empire turn out to be too critical of Israel for my taste. That would leave no morally viable American movement in favor of an ethical foreign policy. I am currently studying this issue, so do not draw any conclusions by the kind of literature that I have displayed in the following. I will try to consider all points of view, and then one day I will draw my conclusions.

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Remarks on Islam (30 Mar 07): On my (old and partially disowned) website, I have written a great deal on Islam, much of it critical. Superficially, I may sound like many of the conservatives in America, but in fact I diverge sharply from them when it comes to foreign policy. Let me explain.

A year or so ago, I was quite obsessed with the topic of Islam and frequently read sites such as Jihad Watch. I was shocked to learn that the prophet Mohammed waged war in the name of Islam, assassinated nonviolent critics, and slaughtered a tribe of defeated Jewish prisoners of war, among other atrocities. Now it is true that much fanatical blood has been spilled during the history of Christianity, but not according to the explicit example of the founder. In fact, the entire history of Islam is full of imperialistic holy war, even though there were periods of relative peace, during which non-Muslims had second-class status at best. Add to that the severe political and economic decay in the Middle East today, as well as the never-ending violence and turbulence, and one cannot help but suspect that Islam has had a detrimental effect on many Muslims throughout the ages. This sad reality is hardly exonerated by the many decent Muslims who have also occupied the earth, minding their own business and trying to make a living. Nor is it excused by the legacy of colonialism; the Asians have been able to get their act together.

Nevertheless, the debacle in Iraq has modified my views in two ways. First, it has reminded me that one need not be Muslim, nor even a religious fanatic, to engage in a foreign policy that is aggressive and bloody. For a long time, I gave the US administration the benefit of the doubt on the Iraq WMD, but now I realize that the evidence was quite flimsy and doctored, and a pre-emptive war was not justified by any reasonable standards. Given that over 100,000 Iraqis have needlessly died, it is clear that ruinous ideological fervor can take many forms other than Jihad. Further, it is clear that the military sledgehammer is simply the wrong tool to fight terrorism; indeed, it probably increases it and does little to protect us. Yet it was not just the doing of the administration; both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly to give Bush a blank check to invade Iraq, 'to their everlasting shame', as Andrew Bacevich puts it. Such wrongheadedness on the part of the elites of a superpower is appalling. It can only be ascribed to inexcusable stupidity or to equally inexcusable hidden motives, such as regime change and a general will to dominate the world. Even our behavior during the Cold War now seems suspect to me, though the threat of the Warsaw Pact to Europe was no doubt far greater than that posed by individual gangs of terrorists today.

The second modification in my view of Islam is that I now realize how the very real faults of another society can be exploited for imperialistic aggression by the rulers of one's own society. No doubt the puritanical strain of Islam oppresses many in the Middle East and elsewhere. But the disaster in Iraq illustrates how foolish it is to suppose that a society can be socially engineered by hated foreign occupiers. And those occupiers are highly vulnerable to guerrilla war (e.g. IEDs) and to the general patriotic hostility of the population. We should have learned our lesson in Vietnam. In this light, it is perverse to whip up martial hysteria by highlighting the faults of another society, when that society poses no serious threat to us. No Muslim army can possibly invade us. Handfuls of terrorists are basically criminals and should be dealt with accordingly. The military solution is absurd and useless. If Muslim immigration is a problem, then that is dealt with through sensible immigration policies. Yet despite all this, it is clear that many elements of the Christian Right in America are exploiting the medieval aspects of Islam to demonize a large swath of the world and to conjure up a threat far greater than what actually exists. We gobble up half the military budget of the world, while the Middle East is one big economic basket case; it is laughable to compare any Muslim country to Germany under Adolf Hitler, as American hawks often do. There is simply no justification for imperialistic adventures in the Middle East.

Thus, the proper reaction to the dark side of Islam should be defensive, not offensive. We should screen all Muslims entering the country for militant ideology. We should cease collaborating with Middle Eastern tyrants, which makes us so hated and fosters terrorism. The problems of the region should be handled by the people of the region, perhaps with our respectful assistance. Our job is to make sure that those problems remain contained in the region and do not spill into Europe or America. That means minding our borders, not invading or meddling like colonialists. Minding our business and withdrawing bases will most likely help to stabilize the region. They will sell us their oil under any circumstances, because they have to. (How many times have I heard that oil is 'fungible'?) As for nuclear weapons, we must realize why Iran is possibly seeking a nuclear weapon (though there is no solid evidence). It is because we trampled their next-door neighbor. They would be foolish not to seek such a deterrent. We must be honest about the ultimate cause of events, and demonizing a backwards religion only blinds us to reality.

Of course, the wild card in all this is Israel. It is true that much vicious and Islam-inspired slander of Israel has appeared in the Muslim press. It is true that Arab nations have attacked Israel on several occasions, and that Palestinian terrorist groups have called for the extermination of Israel. It is true that Israel is a tiny postage stamp in a hostile Muslim sea. But it is also true that Israel has been continuously expanding into the West Bank with settlements. The current wall is trying to freeze this into place, snaking as it does deep into Palestinian territory and carving it into Bantustans. A wall following the 1967 border would be far preferable; it would protect against terrorism and impose what seems like the only viable solution. The dismantling of the settlements has even been part of official US policy, but nothing ever happens, due to the power of AIPAC. Indeed, it is organizations allied to AIPAC who have been demonizing Muslims by amplifying the very real barbaric elements of their religion into a global specter that bears little relationship to reality. On the contrary, it is our excessive and unthinking reaction that might turn this into a self-fulfilling prophecy, should we become recklessly embroiled in the region. Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself, but the issue has been clouded over by the Jewish-Israeli right, with its peace-defying settlements, its financial power over the American political process, and its skillful exploitation of the media, for which the retrograde nature of Islam has been a convenient asset.

Michael Scheuer: On Who Speaks for Islam?

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American Empire: Resources

NOTE (5 Apr 07): This section consists of a list of books and internet articles relevant to the topic of American empire, posted as I encounter them. The rationale for excluding journal articles is that, while I am willing to buy some good books, I am not willing to subscribe to journals, especially when many of the better articles are available on the web. Notice also that I am open-minded about including articles by non-experts, as many people have a story to tell and ideas worth listening to. Even with the so-called experts, one must always exercise one's judgment as to what to believe.

I begin by concentrating on the so-called 'left-wing' literature, since this is new to me and it emphasizes the controversial topic at hand, namely, a harsh critique of American foreign policy — unlike most of the mainstream and conservative literature, which tends to shy away. I have yet to decide on just where to draw the line, but I strongly suspect that the thesis of American imperialism, as enunciated by someone like Chalmers Johnson, is correct in its essentials. Perhaps Noam Chomsky and others go too far in some instances and fail to consider legitimate US security needs. We will see. At the present time, I can enthusiastically recommend the books by Johnson and Dreyfuss. I have read enough of them to know that they are highly professional and reliable works (and Johnson is even an old Cold Warrior who saw the light).

Books and Websites

Books: Blowback

Chalmers Johnson: Blowback

Chalmers Johnson: Sorrows of Empire

Chalmers Johnson: Nemesis

Robert Dreyfuss: Devil's Game

Noam Chomsky: What We Say Goes

Books: The Cold War

Robert McMahon: The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction

David F. Schmitz: The US and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1965-1989

Robert Johnson: Congress and the Cold War

Richard Rhodes: Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race

Howard Zinn: The Twentieth Century: A People's History

Books: CIA Operations

Robert Dreyfuss: Devil's Game

William Blum: Killing Hope: US Interventions Since World War II

Tim Weiner: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Steve Coll: Ghost Wars: Secret History of the CIA

James Risen: State of War: The CIA and the Bush Administration

Stephen Kinzer: All the Shah's Men: Roots of Middle East Terror

Robert Baer: See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA

Books: Vietnam

David Halberstam: The Best and the Brightest

Daniel Ellsberg: Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam

Kevin Ruane: War and Revolution in Vietnam

Randall Woods: Vietnam and the American Political Tradition

Gareth Porter: Perils of Dominance: Road to Vietnam

Books: US and the Islamic World

Mehran Kamrava: The Modern Middle East

Craig Unger: House of Bush, House of Saud

Ziauddin Sardar: Why Do People Hate America?

Srdja Trifkovic: The Sword of the Prophet

Bernard Lewis: The Crisis of Islam

Akbar S. Ahmed: Journey into Islam

M.J. Akbar: The Shade of Swords

Peter Bergen: Holy War, Inc.

Elaine Sciolino: Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran

John Farndon: Iran: Everything You Need to Know

Scott Ritter: Target Iran

Daniel Byman: Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism

Eric Margolis: War at the Top of the World

Sarah Chayes: The Punishment of Virtue: Afghanistan after the Taliban

Books: US and Israel

Jimmy Carter: Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid

Alan Dershowitz: The Case for Israel

Norman Finkelstein: Beyond Chutzpah

Kathleen Christison: Perceptions of Palestine

Neill Lochery: Why Blame Israel?

Benny Morris: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949

Ilan Pappe: The Israel/Palestine Question

Books: Response to 9/11

Noam Chomsky: 9-11

William Blum: Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

Stephen Holmes: Matador's Cape: America's Reckless Response to 911

James Bamford: A Pretext for War

Tony Smith: A Pact with the Devil

Seymour Hersh: Chain of Command

Micah Sifry: The Iraq War Reader

Andrew Bacevich: The New American Militarism

John Newhouse: Imperial America

Craig Unger: The Fall of the House of Bush

Glenn Greenwald: A Tragic Legacy: The Bush Presidency

Books: International Law

2004: Michael Mandel: How America Gets Away With Murder

Books: Domestic Freedom

Charlie Savage: Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency

John Dean: Worse Than Watergate

Roberts & Stratton: The Tyranny of Good Intentions

Websites

Antiwar

Z Magazine

Third World Traveler

American Empire Project

Americans Against Bombing

Website: Noam Chomsky

Website: Howard Zinn

Website: John Pilger

Website: William Blum

ZNet: Edward Herman

ZNet: Norman Solomon

ZNet: William Blum

National Security Archives

National Security Archives: Cold War Interviews

The Military Industrial Complex

US Navy: Use of US Forces Abroad (1798-1993)

White House: National Security Strategy (2006)

Wikipedia: List of US military events

Wikipedia: Noam Chomsky [criticism]

Wikipedia: Chalmers Johnson [JPRI] [bio]

Wikipedia: Edward Herman [Znet] [TWT]

Wikipedia: Gabriel Kolko

Videos

Google Video: Hijacking Catastrophe

You Tube: Why We Fight - Part 1

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General Articles

US Empire Articles: Before 2001

William Blum: A Brief History of U.S. Interventions: 1945-present

Third World Traveler: Friendly Dictators (1995)

FFF: John Quincy Adams on U.S. Foreign Policy (1821)

Jean Kirkpatrick: Dictatorships & Double Standards (1979)

Robert Kagan: Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy (1996)

PNAC: Rebuilding America's Defenses (2000)

Noam Chomsky vs. John Silber on Sandinistas vs. Contras (1986)

Edward Herman: Bombing a la Mode (1998)

Edward Herman: They Brought It On Themselves (1999)

Edward Herman: The Banality of Evil (1995)

Alan Parrington: Clinton had chance to avoid Kosovo bombing (2000)

Michael Hardesty: Review of Chomsky's The New Military Humanism

Democracy Now: A challenge to Gen. Wesley clark on Serbia (video)

Justin Raimondo: Buchanan Unbowed (1999)

Justin Raimondo: Blowback: Read this book! (2000)

Murray Rothbard: Myths of the Cold War (1966)

Joseph Stromberg: Chalmers Johnson on an 'Ersatz Roman Empire'

Brzezinski: US meddling in Afghanistan prior to Russian invasion (1998)

NSA: Interview with Robert McNamara (1998)

NSA: Interview with Robert McNamara (1999)

NSA: Interview with Leslie Gelb (1999)

NSA: Interview with Jeane Kirkpatrick (1999)

NSA: Interview with Richard Perle (1999)

NSA: Interview with Jimmy Carter (1999)

NSA: Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski (1999)

NSA: Interview with Henry Kissinger (1999)

NSA: Interview with Paul Nitze (1999)

NSA: Interview with John Negroponte (1999)

NSA: Interview with Allen Ginsburg (1999)

NSA: Interview with Eugene McCarthy (1999)

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US Empire Articles: 2001-2005

2001

Chalmers Johnson: Blowback

Justin Raimondo: Hiroshima: Why Americans are Barbarians

Tom Ambrose: Raimondo's wrong

Noam Chomsky: The United States is a Leading Terrorist State

Noam Chomsky: Liberating the Mind from Orthodoxies

Andrew Bacevich: Rescinding the Bush Doctrine

2002

William Blum: American Empire For Dummies

Edward Herman: Christopher Hitchens And The Uses Of Demagoguery

Marc Herold: Civilian Victims of US Bombing of Afghanistan

Edward Herman: Nation-Busting Euphoria, Nation-Building Fatigue

Andrew Bacdvich: The Myth of the Reluctant Superpower

2003

Chalmers Johnson: The Scourge of Militarism

Chalmers Johnson: Iraqi Wars

Chalmers Johnson: Best of him on TomDispatch

Chalmers Johnson: Assassins R Us

Noam Chomsky: Imperial Ambition

Edward Herman: Threat Inflation: Going after hapless countries

Edward Herman: Diana Johnstone on the Balkan Wars

Louis Proyect: Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade

John Bellamy Foster: Imperial America and War

Josh Marshall: Practice to Deceive

Jessica Stern: How America Created a Terrorist Haven

Marko Attila Hoare: The Left Revisionists

Karen De Coster: Neo-Wilsonianism and Neoconservatism

Ivan Eland: Winning Over Arabs Using Israeli Tactics

Frontline: The Liberal Divide over Iraq

2004

Chalmers Johnson: America's Empire of Bases

Chalmers Johnson: Conversations with History [video]

Chalmers Johnson: Abolish the CIA

Edward Herman: The Afghan, El Salvador, and Iraq Elections

Michael Lind: A Tragedy of Errors

David Moberg: Imperial Barbarians

Tom Barry: Liberal Hawks: Flying in Neocon Circles

Arvind Lavakare: America's inhuman rights record

Martin Van Creveld: Why Iraq Will End as Vietnam Did

Henry Kissinger: Back to Realism

Samuel Huntington: The Clash of Civilizations Revisited

Robert Parry: Rating Reagan: A Bogus Legacy

Wiliam Bowles: Review of The New Imperialism by David Harvey

John Pilger: The Warlords of America

Robert Parry: Bush Sr.'s Iraq-Iran Secrets

2005

Chalmers Johnson: Coming to Terms with China

Chalmers Johnson: The Smash of Civilizations

Edward Herman: The New York Times Versus Civil Society

Richard Haass: Regime Change and Its Limits

Justin Raimondo: Vietnam — we're still fighting over it

Marko Attila Hoare: Chomsky's Genocidal Denial

David Henderson: An Economist Against Interventionist Foreign Policy

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US Empire Articles: 2006

White House: The National Security Strategy for 2006

Chalmers Johnson: Cold Warrior in a Strange Land

Chalmers Johnson: Interview on TomDispatch - Part I [Part II]

Chalmers Johnson: The Sorrows of Empire (video)

Chalmers Johnson: Exporting the American Model

Edward Herman: The U.S. and Israel

WW4 Report: Chomsky and Herman's hypocrisy on Bosnia

M.A. Hoare: The Guardian, Noam Chomsky and the Milosevic Lobby

Michael Scheuer: Is There a Role for Reality in US Foreign Policy?

F. William Engdahl: The US's Geopolitical Nightmare

Zbigniew Brzezinski: George Bush's Suicidal Statecraft

F. Michael Vlahos: The Weakness of Empire

Pew Research: America's Image Slips, But Allies Share U.S. Concerns

Sebastian Mallaby: The Wisdom Of Retreat

Andrew J. Bacevich: The Islamic Way of War

Tony Judt: Bush's Useful Idiots (the 'Liberals')

Steven P. Rosen: What to Do If More States Go Nuclear

John Denson: A Century of War

Third World Traveler: Where Do Our Income Tax Dollars Go?

Gareth Porter: The Bloodbath We Created in Iraq

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US Empire Articles: 2007

January 2007

Chalmers Johnson: An NIE on the USA

Pat Buchanan: End of a Year, End of an Era

Pat Buchanan: Bush's Errant Ideology

Jeff Taylor: Bipartisan Nature of U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment

James Petras: Who Rules America?

Alan Dershowitz: Justifying the neocon view (video)

John Pilger: Palestine Is Still The Issue (video)

Edward Herman: Iraq: The Genocide Option

February 2007

Chalmers Johnson: Empire vs. Democracy

Chalmers Johnson: Nemesis: Video Interview

Chalmers Johnson: 737 U.S. Military Bases = Global Empire

Edward Herman: Milosevic Trial: HRW in service to the War Party

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Testimony

William Pfaff: Manifest Destiny: A New Direction for America

Tom Barry: America's Crusaders

March 2007

Peter Bergen: The Iraq Effect (on terrorism)

Chalmers Johnson: Interview on Alternet

FORA: A conversation with Chalmers Johnson (video)

Pat Buchanan: Interventions Without End?

Ed Herman: Richard Holbrooke, Samantha Power, and ...

April 2007

Rick Feinberg: Why they hate us

Matt Taibi: Interview with Seymour Hersh

THE SEMIWARRIORS
Andrew Bacevich, The Nation, 5 Apr 07

Without anyone taking much notice, Americans forfeited ownership of their Army [by abandoning the draft]. The armed forces became the property of the Commander in Chief, to be used as he sees fit — a proposition that has long since received tacit Congressional endorsement. In practice, when it comes to climbing aboard the bandwagon bound for war, few members of Congress will risk being left behind. As a consequence, write Crenson and Ginsberg, 'America's military ventures abroad now rely on a relatively small and insulated force' of regulars 'whose deployment and casualties produce barely a ripple on Main Street'.
This might be tolerable if presidentialism yielded effective policy. But it doesn't. The overall performance of semiwarriors since the rise of the national security state qualifies at best as mixed. Since 9/11 it has been nothing short of disastrous. Perret's Commander in Chief offers an angry but highly readable account of how Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam and George W. Bush in Iraq repeated the blunders committed by Harry Truman in Korea. Perret portrays each of these conflicts as unnecessary and unwinnable. Each case featured a set of advisers keen to demonstrate their masculinity by sending American soldiers off to fight. In each instance a President out of his depth and ill equipped to exercise independent judgment did as his advisers urged, with tragic results.

Son of Andrew Bacevich Killed in Iraq
'I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose'

Gabriel Kolko: A Rational Perspective on Our Present Crises

Gore Vidal: End of the American Empire

Ivan Eland: Will Current Disasters Curtail Future Interventions?

May 2007

Chalmers Johnson: Ending the Empire

Pat Buchanan: Dying for...Estonia?

Georgie Anne Geyer: Cultural Consequences of Iraq

June 2007

Jonathan Freedland: Review of Chalmer Johnson's Nemesis (NYRB)

Justin Raimondo: For the War Party, it's always 1940

Ian Buruma: Ghosts of the Holocaust

BUSH SAYS WE'LL BE IN IRAQ FOR 50 YEARS
REPORTERS DON'T BOTHER TO ASK IRAQIS TO COMMENT
by Joshua Holland and Raed Jarrar, AlterNet, 8 Jun 07

Justin Raimondo: Middle East Meltdown

Condoleezza Rice: Power & Promise of American Realism

Patrick Foy: The Death of American Empire

RISE AND FALL OF THE BIZARRO EMPIRE
Justin Raimondo, Antiwar, 18 Jun 07

It doesn't matter that air power exacerbates the problem in Iraq, rather than solving it. It doesn't matter that we're alienating ordinary Iraqis, who often are the victims of U.S. air raids; all that matters is that the Air Force's rivalry with the Army (and the Navy) requires air strikes. What determines our 'strategy' is a shifting concatenation of competing agencies and political factions that meet on the battlefield of congressional committees and the higher councils of U.S. policymakers. The outcome of this war — the intra-bureaucratic turf war — determines the strategy and conduct of the external war. And that is the road to certain defeat.
[. . .]
The American Empire is being undone by its bigness — no one can centrally plan such an enormous undertaking. The physical holdings of the Pentagon alone are so vast that they constitute a nation unto themselves. . . . Empires cost money, and this one, as Garet Garrett wryly observed half a century ago, is unique in that 'everything goes out and nothing comes in'. . . . The American Imperium ... is the Bizarro Empire, where U.S. taxpayers pay tribute to America's local satraps, such as Egypt and Israel — the two biggest recipients of our 'foreign aid' program. We defend Japan and South Korea, allowing them to shelter under our military umbrella while they export finished goods to the American market — and lend us the money to build an empire of bases around the world. . . . As Ron Paul tirelessly points out, the American welfare-warfare state is built on the shifting sands of an economic pump-priming perpetual motion machine, i.e., government debt. We are selling our children into slavery and bankrupting the nation . . .

NIHILISM & NEOCONSERVATISM
Justin Raimondo, Antiwar, 20 Jun 07

The ruling elites, however, have a different point of view, one shaped by their own Washington-centered perspective. They like to believe that they really are running the world, no matter what party they belong to, and they — the elites in government, media, and the corporate world — act accordingly. As for the American public at large — they are like children who can be manipulated this way and that according to the convenience of the moment. Ordinary Americans may be unruly at times, but, ultimately they can be controlled — or so the elites believe and hope. In their hubris, the War Party embarked on a large-scale military campaign in the Middle East, without considering the power and scope of the possible 'blowback' — up to and including the political blowback here in the U.S.
With the presidential primaries of both parties effectively rigged against the possibility of a credible antiwar candidate arising to wrest the nomination from the pro-war front-runners, and the War Party's propaganda machine revving up its motors for another go, this time at Iran, we are in for a very explosive next couple of years. The reason is because the political system lacks any effective safety valves: there is no way for ordinary people to have any real impact, and therefore the special interests — and the War Party is just a collection of very special ideological and corporate interests — have taken over. That's why a radically unpopular war not only continues but is now being escalated in a 'surge' of air strikes and major movements on the ground. We had an election in which the 'antiwar' party won — and that's when the war got hotter, more violent, and started to spread.

Thomas Gale Moore: The Curse of Power

Charley Reese: Goodbye and Good Luck

Adam Elkus: The End of Supreme Command

Sheldon Richman: Why They Hate Us

Stephen F. Cohen: The New American Cold War

FPIF: An Alternative Foreign Policy Framework

July 2007

Howard Zinn: Put away the flags

Amy Goodman: U.S.-Backed Oil Law Is 'Robbery'

Robert Scheer: James Madison's Nightmare

Barrack Obama: Renewing American Leadership

August 2007

Roberts: US Hegemony Spawns Russian-Chinese Military Alliance

Gabriel Kolko: Mechanistic Destruction: US Policy at Point Zero

Noam Chomsky: Samantha Power, Bush & Terrorism

Justin Raimondo: U.S. comptroller general: America is Rome

Justin Raimondo: Why Interventionism Fails

Werther: The Architecture of Perpetual War

Werther: Militarism's Transmission Belt

Hiro & Engelhardt: America on the Downward Slope

James Dobbins: Who Lost Iraq?

Juan Cole: Napoleon in Egypt

Antiwar: Video debate: Too Much War, or Not Enough?

Pat Buchanan: Can We Win the Ideological War?

September 2007

Nebojsa Malic: A Fight Empire Can't Win

James P. Pinkerton: The Once & Future Christendom

Norman Solomon: Here's the Smell of the Blood Still

Charley Reese: Shock and Horror

Justin Raimondo: The Wall of Silence

Daniel Ellsberg: A Coup Has Occurred

Edward Herman: Western Elite's War Against the Third World

October 2007

Stephen Zunes: Five years later (after Iraq invasion)

FrontPage Symposium: If we fail in Iraq

Pat Buchanan: Who Restarted the Cold War?

Jim Pittaway: Superpower Trip

Stephen Holmes: Apocalypse Now? (on Chalmers Johnson)

Chalmers Johnson: Intellectual Fallacies of the War on Terror

Francis Fukuyama: A Self-Defeating Hegemony

David Bromwich: Are Educated Jingoes Honest?

Michiko Kakutani: Review of World War IV by Norman Podhoretz

November 2007

Antiwar Radio: Naomi Wolf on 'The End of America'

Hillary Clinton: Security and Opportunity for the 21st Century

Archbishop of Canterbury: USA worse than British empire

Herman & Peterson: U.S. Aggression and Its Collaborators

TPM: Maliki trades permanent US presence for his protection

Joseph Gerson: Empire and Nuclear Weapons

December 2007

US MISDEEDS IN A NUTSHELL
William Blum, The Anti-Empire Report, 11 Dec 07

Here for the record is a brief summary of Washington's charming history in relation to such men, their foreign ideas, and their dubious governments since the end of World War Two:
Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected; successful a majority of the time.
Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
Dropped bombs on the people of some 30 countries.
Helped to suppress dozens of populist/nationalist movements.[12]

[12] In sequence, details of the five items can be found in Blum's books: Freeing the World, chapter 15; Rogue State, chapters 18, 3, 11, 17; see also Killing Hope for further details.

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US Empire Articles: 2008

January 2008

David Bromwich: Maxims of Peace and War

Chalmers Johnson: An Imperialist Comedy

Eric Foner: Battle Pieces

Justin Raimondo: The Hundred-Year War

Harold Bloom: The Fall of America

Herman & Peterson: There is no 'War on Terror'

Noam Chomsky: We own the world

Chalmers Johnson: The debt crisis is now our greatest threat

February 2008

Justin Raimondo: A million Iraqis dead — for what?

Justin Raimondo: Iraq and the Kosovo Connection

Neil Munro: Data Bomb (Iraqi deaths)

Uri Avnery: A popular insurgency is bound to win

March 2008

Robert Parry: Iraq War as War Crime (Part One)

Robert Parry: Iraq War as War Crime (Part Two)

Robert Parry: How could so many people buy into Bush's war?

McClatchy News: Pentagon review finds no Osama-Saddam link

Paul Craig Roberts: The Collapse of American Power

Gordon Prather: Scott Ritter: Reflections

Scott Ritter: Dinner with Ahmed

Ray McGovern: Frontline's Timid Iraq Retrospective

April 2008

Howard Zinn: Empire Or Humanity?

David Green: How to curb America's addiction to war

Fareed Zakaria: The future of American power

Chalmers Johnson: The pentagon strangles our economy

Chalmers Johnson: America's University of Imperialism

Uri Avnery: Always the military option

May 2008

Edward Herman: Principles of the Imperial New World Order

Jim Lobe: Survey: Gulf between democracy in theory and practice

Bill Moyers: Democracy in America: We may be running out of luck

Chalmers Johnson: Our 'Managed Democracy'

James Bovard: The democratic-peace fraud

Murray Rothbard: Wall street, banks, and American foreign policy

Sheldon Richman: Happy Revisionist History Day

Pat Buchanan: How the West lost the world

Niall Ferguson: Philip Bobbitt's Terror and Consent

June 2008

Saul Landau: How we got into this mess

John Pilger: Obama is a truly democratic expansionist

July 2008

Paul Craig Roberts: We, the salt of the earth, take precedence

Pat Buchanan: Honorable exit from empire

Chalmers Johnson: The Military-Industrial Complex

Andrew Marshall: The Anglo-American imperial project

August 2008

Andrew Bacevich: Illusions of victory

Andrew Bacevich: Interview with Bill Moyers (video)

Doug Bandow: On Bacevich's The Limits of Power

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Iraq Intelligence

Introduction (23 Feb 08): It is now clear that the WMD 'evidence' that got us into Iraq was fraudulent. For a long time, I gave the administration the benefit of the doubt that it was an honest mistake, but the evidence is overwhelming that it was not. Basically, the UN inspectors were getting back into Iraq during late 2002 and early 2003. They were able to go wherever they wished, and they were turning up nothing. This was all reported on the IAEA website, but our establishment press wasn't interested, as brilliantly reported by Bill Moyers. Furthermore, much of the 'evidence' was dubious and fraudulent, such as the 'source' called Curveball or the Niger yellowcake. Congress could have known all this, if it had wanted to, but instead, it felt the patriotism after 9/11, and voted Bush a blank check for war. We have seen something similar with the Gulf of Tonkin and the Spanish-American war. I have been collecting all the links I can find on this and have placed them on a special webpage.

IRAQ INTELLIGENCE PAGE

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Iran Intelligence

Introduction (23 Feb 08): Has Iran been developing a nuclear weapon in secret? A recent NIE has laid to rest these fears, at least for the moment. However, we must understand the context. Iran signed the NPT and has a right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. On some occasions, it has resisted inspections, but if one probes deeper, one realizes that it was generally reacting to bullying from the US, as any nation would. The US has simply decided that Iran cannot be 'trusted', period, and this is a violation of the NPT. Furthermore, one cannot blame Iran for wanting a bomb, what with the US invading its next-door neighbor and killing over a million, not to mention its other nuclear-armed neighbors, such as Israel and Pakistan. We have a long history with Iran, going back to the CIA overthrow of democratically-elected Mossadeq in 1953, who wanted to nationalize the oil companies. We installed the Shah, who was a ruthless dictator with a secret police that practiced torture. He was overthrown in 1979 by Khomeini, who held our embassy people hostage and who replaced the Shah with am orthodox Islamic state that, while repressive, is no worse than under the Shah. At any rate, internal Iranian matters are none of our business, and the Iranians have made serious peace overtures to us on a number of occasions, which we have spurned. I have collected all links related to intelligence on Iran on a special webpage. Mostly, I am concerned with a possible nuclear weapon, but other information is also of interest.

IRAN INTELLIGENCE PAGE

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CIA Activities

Introduction (5 Feb 08): The dirty tricks of the CIA have achieved a near folklore status. In fact, many popular movies basically glorify a cloak-and-dagger approach to solving our foreign policy problems. Unfortunately, and leaving aside morality, it simply doesn't work. Overthrowing elected or popular leaders as in Iran and Chile, or aiding and abetting the mass slaughter of innocents as in Central America and Indonesia, generates tremendous resentment and ultimately leads to blowback like the attack on the World Trade Center.

It is especially remarkable how insulated the American public is from realizing what our government has been up to. For instance, Reagan is widely considered a hero, despite his support for bloody death squads in Nicaragua, when there was no credible threat to America security. (And by the way, he had nothing to do with the downfall of the Soviet Union, which imploded from within.)

To tell the truth, all of our post-WWII presidents are probably guilty of war crimes. Carter and Brzezinski built up the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and hoped the Soviets would invade, in order to give them their Vietnam (as Brzezinski admitted in a famous article to a French newspaper — he denies this was goading but a reasonable person could claim that it amounted to the same thing). Clinton's 'humanitarian' bombing of Serbia amounted to taking sides in a nasty civil conflict, in which there had been atrocities on both sides. The bombing killed many civilians and helped to fuel a humanitarian crisis rather than prevent one. Then there were the unnecessary Clinton sanctions on Iraq, which killed at least half a million children, but which Madeleine Albright deemed 'worth it'. And so on. But the public knows little or nothing of the actual facts, even if the CIA has achieved a certain popular reputation. Thus, Congress fails to reign in our sprawling intelligence and military apparatus. Indeed, it funnels vast amounts of taxpayer dollars into classified black holes with little or no supervision.

Books

Robert Dreyfuss: Devil's Game

William Blum: Killing Hope: US Interventions Since World War II

Tim Weiner: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Steve Coll: Ghost Wars: Secret History of the CIA

James Risen: State of War: The CIA and the Bush Administration

Stephen Kinzer: All the Shah's Men: Roots of Middle East Terror

Robert Baer: See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA

General

Third World Traveler: Covert Activities

Robert Parry: Consortium News: Archives

Robert Parry: Rating Reagan: A Bogus Legacy

Robert Parry: Ronald Reagan's Bloody 'Apocalypto'

William Blum: Third World Traveler page

William Blum: Excerpts from Killing Hope (1995 edition)

William Blum: Excerpts from Killing Hope (2004 edition)

William Blum: Excerpts from Rogue State

William Blum: Excerpts from Freeing the World to Death

William Blum: Making Heads Roll

John Stockwell: Third World Traveler page

John Stockwell: Wikipedia: Outspoken CIA veteran

John Stockwell: The Secret Wars of the CIA

John Stockwell: The Third World War (video)

Duane Clarridge: Wikipedia: Outspoken CIA veteran

Duane Clarridge: CIA actions in Chile were 'worth it' (video)

Duane Clarridge: 'Like it or lump it' (video)

Duane Clarridge: Review of his book by Robert Parry

Chalmers Johnson: The Life and Times of the CIA

Chalmers Johnson: From CIA Analyst to Best-Selling Scholar

Chalmers Johnson: Blowback

Chalmers Johnson: Abolish the CIA!

Chalmers Johnson: The Largest Covert Operation in CIA History

NSA: National Security Archives: Cold War Interviews

NSA: Interview with John Negroponte (1999)

NSA: Interview with Jeane Kirkpatrick (1999)

John Pilger: The War on Democracy (video)

Roger Morris: Robert Gates and the Tortured World of US Intel

BBC: CIA details Cold War skulduggery

Justin Raimondo: The 'Family Jewels'

David Corn: Where's the CIA's Missing Jewel?

Website: Dictator of the Month

Iran

Stephen Kinzer: All the Shah's Men: Roots of Middle East Terror

Wikipedia: Mohammed Mosaddeq

NYT: The CIA in Iran

GW Nat'l Security Archive: The Iran Documentation Project

David Robarge (CIA): Review of Stephen Kinzer's All the Shah's Men

Prof. R.J. Rummel: What About That 1953 CIA Iranian Coup?

Renato Constantino: The coup against Mossadegh

More or Less: A Mossadegh Timeline

YouTube: CIA Overthrow of Mossadeq (PBS video)

Ahmad Faruqui: The Oily Business of Regime Change

Robert Fisk: Another Fine Mess

Chile

Wikipedia: Chile

Library of Congress: Chile: A Country Study

Nicaragua

Wikipedia: Nicaragua

Library of Congress: Nicaragua: A Country Study

Robert Parry: CIA admits Contra-cocaine trafficking in 1980s

WP: Sandinista Aims for Comeback in Nicaragua

Chris Floyd: Ortega Wins! Will Bush make Nicaragua pay?

Carole Harper: The Legacy of the Revolution

Jorian Schutz: Impact of the Sandinistas on Nicaragua (1998)

Marc Cooper: A Sandinista Lesson for Afghanistan (2001)

Vianica: The Sandinista Revolution

CATO: The 'Reagan Doctrine' and Its Pitfalls (1986)

Ronald Reagan: Address to the Nation on Nicaragua (16 March 1986)

David Model: Reagan and Nicaragua (from Lying for Empire)

Mark Weisbrot: What Everyone Should Know About Nicaragua

Other Central America

Wikipedia: El Salvador

Library of Congress: El Salvador: A Country Study

Robert Parry: History of Guatemala's 'Death Squads'

Edward Herman: Western Elite's War Against the Third World

War on Terror

PBS: The Dark Side (2006)

PBS: The Dark Side: Interview with Gary Schroen

Mother Jones: Torture Hits Home

Peter Bergen: Kidnapped by the CIA

JoAnn Wypijewski: Abu Ghraib's Last Trial

David Goodman: Psychologists and Torture

Eric Umansky: Department of Pre-Crime

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Vietnam War

Introduction (5 Feb 08): Whereas the Iraq war is a clear-cut case of a pre-emptive attack based on flimsy 'intelligence', the Vietnam war is more problematic, like the Korean war before it. Basically, we were helping a corrupt regime fight a Communist regime, a common pattern throughout the Cold War. Which was the lesser of evils? What was neglected throughout the conflict, with characteristic American arrogance, was the opinion of the great majority of Vietnamese, who took the side of the Communists due to patriotic, anti-colonial fervor. (Likewise, did anybody ask the Iraqis if they wished to be 'liberated' with a bloody invasion?)

Moreover, our government was so blinded by ideology that it had no qualms about the horrendous toll on both South and North Vietnamese. Even a just war becomes evil if the cost is too great. And if that isn't enough, it is clear that Johnson lied us into the war with the Gulf of Tonkin affair, just as we were lied into the Iraq war and so many others. Of course, this doesn't excuse the nearly unanimous cowardice of a compliant Congress, which manifested itself again prior to the Iraq War. What does it take to learn from history?

Perhaps the best article to read in the following is the interview with the late and most-decorated war hero David Hackworth, who personally experienced the Viet Cong in combat and realized that their determination and willingness to sacrifice meant that no amount of bombing, napalm, agent orange and other ruthlessness would prevent them from ultimately winning. Which they did. Then there was the illegal and brutal sideshow in Cambodia, which helped create the genocidal Khmer Rouge...

Resources

Wikipedia: The Vietnam War

History Place: The Vietnam War

Global Security: The Vietnam War

PBS: Vietnam Online

PBS: Battlefield Vietnam

Vietnampix: The Vietnam War

Wikipedia: Ngo Dinh Diem

Wikipedia: Gabriel Kolko

Books

David Halberstam: The Best and the Brightest

Daniel Ellsberg: Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam