amahchewahwah

Empire in Extremis
by Stephen Fleischman

“…they stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast…”
– the Eagles
Hotel California

How many Americans know the actual number of US military bases their tax dollars support around the world?
What would be your guess?
Would you believe 737, spread over 130 countries, according to the Defense Department’s annual “Base Structure Report”—and that’s not counting another 6000 bases in the United States and its territories?
Chalmers Johnson, in his latest book, “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic” cites the “worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, to be 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306 Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires.”

Overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more that it leases; and more than 29,819,492 acres of land worldwide, making the Pentagon one of the world’s largest landlords.

The Roman Empire at its height in the year 117 AD had only 37 bases to police its realm from All Gaul (which was divided into three parts) to Egypt.

Ike Eisenhower’s parting shot, when he left the presidency of the United States in 1961, was his warning about the military-industrial complex.

It was too little, too late. We had been a nation born in genocide, destroying the Native American tribes and taking possession of their land. We developed a major part of our economy through slavery, a plantation system and a three way slave trade broken only by the industrial revolution and the development of capitalism. The Civil War brought us into the modern imperialist era. The Monroe Doctrine. Manifest Destiny.

We allowed ourselves to become a militarized nation, a militarized economy. We needed to set an example for the world. Any defiance of our hegemony meant war. There was the Mexican War. The Spanish-American War. We took Cuba and the Philippines. It went on from there.

So now we have a war-like beast that cannot be restrained. Slick propaganda got us into World War I and Pearl Harbor into World War II (conveniently arranged, some say). The Korean War and the Vietnam War were set-ups. Dominoes just don’t fall that way. But we’ve managed to leave military bases in the lands of most of the vanquished, in South Korea and in Germany, to name a few, still there after fifty and sixty years.

US elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve, has finally admitted, in his recently published memoir, that the Iraq War was primarily about oil (something the Bush administration has vehemently denied).

So our simple democracy has spawned a global empire.

What does this portend?

Must we start another war to keep the economy going? Bush would like to get someone to bomb Iran before he leaves office. Maybe he can get Israel to do it? They’ve been champing at the bit, just waiting for the nod from Bush. But even the Israelis must be struck by what a world-wide catastrophe the bombing of Iran would cause.

So what is a nation to do?

This nation must militate! Like Mussolini did in Italy. A little Fascism might be a helpful thing. Make the planes fly on time. It could also keep activists in their place. Inactive. They didn’t build Guantanamo for nothing. America’s first concentration camp? No, it’s second. There were the Japanese relocation centers during World War II.

And extraordinary rendition might also be a useful tool to keep the lid on. A little kidnapping. A little torture by proxy, off-shore.

Does it fit the Project for the Old American Century criterion for fascism, comparing the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet and the 14 characteristics common to those fascist regimes? Well, maybe not all—but enough.

You must glorify war in order to get the public to accept the fact that they’re going to send their sons and daughters to die. And don’t forget to wear your lapel flag pin.

There was a little juice in the anti-war movement before the onslaught on Iraq in 2003. But then it went blah. What happened?

In the mid-term election of 2006, the Democrats took both houses of Congress. Polls showed that a majority of Americans, some as high as 73%, wanted an end to the Iraq war and they counted on the Democrats to get it for them.

What they got was a continuation of the war with enough Democrats joining the Bush War Party to vote for funding. Among them were Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama who, in the midst of their primary squabble over who was the most anti-war, both voted to fund the war. That’s the kind of steely knives they used!

We now have two presidential candidates representing different wings of the ruling oligarchy. You’re trapped in our two party-one party system.

“…you can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!”