And Ten Steps to Take to Do So
Chalmers Johnson
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 […]
Facing the American World We Created
Tom Engelhardt
We’ve just passed through the CIA assassination flap, already fading from the news after less than two weeks of media attention. Broken in several major newspapers, here’s how the story goes: the Agency, evidently under Vice President Dick Cheney’s orders, didn’t inform Congress that, to assassinate al-Qaeda leaders, it was trying to develop and deploy global death squads. (Of course, just about no one is going to call them that, but the description fits.) Congress is now in high dudgeon. The CIA didn’t keep that body’s “Gang of Eight” informed. A House investigation is now underway. We’re told that the CIA — being the president’s private army and part of the executive branch of our government — has committed a heinous dereliction of duty. In fact, not keeping key congressional figures up to date on the developing program could even “be illegal,” according to Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin. (Not […]
The World at 65
Tom Engelhardt
“Being an historian, I am jotting down these notes out of habit; but what I saw and experienced two days ago I am sure no one else as civilized as I am will ever see. I am writing for those who shall come a long time from now.” So began “The Prophecy,” a mock futuristic fantasy set after some great Cold War cataclysm, which several members of my high school graduating class collaborated on back in 1962. It was, of course, for our yearbook and made fun of the class, A to Z. It was also a classic document of the moment, written by representatives of the first generation of “teenagers” who, crouching under their school desks as the sirens of an atomic-attack drill howled outside, imagined that no one in their world might make it. “First of all, let me introduce myself,” “I” continued. “I am Thomas M. Engelhardt, […]
A Film That Captures Some Edgy, Fearful Truths
Ann Jones
Kabul, July 2009 — I’ve come back to the Afghan capital again, after an absence of two years, to find it ruined in a new way. Not by bombs this time, but by security. The heart of the city is now hidden behind piles of Hescos — giant, grey sandbags produced somewhere in Great Britain. They’re stacked against the walls of government buildings, U.N. agencies, embassies, NGO offices, and army camps (of which there are a lot) — and they only seem to grow and multiply. A friend called just the other day from a U.N. building, distressed that the view from her office window was vanishing behind yet another row of Hescos. Urban life as Kabulis knew it in this once graceful city has been lost to the security needs of strangers. The creation of Hescostan in the middle of Kabul is both an effect of, and a cause […]
The (Re)Making of a Petro-State
Michael Klare
Has it all come to this? The wars and invasions, the death and destruction, the exile and torture, the resistance and collapse? In a world of shrinking energy reserves, is Iraq finally fated to become what it was going to be anyway, even before the chaos and catastrophe set in: a giant gas pump for an energy-starved planet? Will it all end not with a bang, but with a gusher? The latest oil news out of that country offers at least a hint of Iraq’s fate. For modern Iraq, oil has always been at the heart of everything. Its very existence as a unified state is largely the product of oil. In 1920, under the aegis of the League of Nations, Britain cobbled together the Kingdom of Iraq from the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul in order to better exploit the holdings of the Turkish Petroleum Company, forerunner […]
Mourning Michael Jackson, Ignoring the Afghan Dead
Tom Engelhardt
It was a blast. I’m talking about my daughter’s wedding. You don’t often see a child of yours quite that happy. I’m no party animal, but I danced my 64-year-old legs off. And I can’t claim that, as I walked my daughter to the ceremony, or ate, or talked with friends, or simply sat back and watched the young and energetic enjoy themselves, I thought about those Afghan wedding celebrations where the “blast” isn’t metaphorical, where the bride, the groom, the partygoers in the midst of revelry die. In the two weeks since, however, that’s been on my mind — or rather the lack of interest our world shows in dead civilians from a distant imperial war — and all because of a passage I stumbled upon in a striking article by journalist Anand Gopal. In “Uprooting an Afghan Village” in the June issue of the Progressive magazine, he writes […]
A Modest Proposal for Garrisoned Lands
Chalmers Johnson
The U.S. Empire of Bases — at $102 billion a year already the world’s costliest military enterprise — just got a good deal more expensive. As a start, on May 27th, we learned that the State Department will build a new “embassy” in Islamabad, Pakistan, which at $736 million will be the second priciest ever constructed, only $4 million less, if cost overruns don’t occur, than the Vatican-City-sized one the Bush administration put up in Baghdad. The State Department was also reportedly planning to buy the five-star Pearl Continental Hotel (complete with pool) in Peshawar, near the border with Afghanistan, to use as a consulate and living quarters for its staff there. Unfortunately for such plans, on June 9th Pakistani militants rammed a truck filled with explosives into the hotel, killing 18 occupants, wounding at least 55, and collapsing one entire wing of the structure. There has been no news […]