Alternatives to Empire » Empire

Review: The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s By Andrew Feldman, August 20, 2010

andrew — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 02:51:24 +0000

Since the attacks of September 11, protection from terrorism has become the United States’ national obsession. Demands for security from the terrorists that seemingly menace the country at every turn have led the U.S. military to occupy two countries and expand the hundreds of bases that it maintains in dozens of foreign nations.

Reflection on why people in the United States have consented to such a radically expansive military response has been as absent from the process as funding for wars has been limitless. Which is why Tom Engelhardt’s observations on these monumental changes in The American Way of War arrive none too soon.

In this edited collection of articles originally published online, Englehardt depicts the fundamental reshaping of U.S. perceptions of the world and presents his own thesis of the causes of current U.S. thought on terror. A combination of fear and divorce from the realities of war, he argues, allows people in the United States to live in peace at home while at war abroad.

Source from Foreign Policy in Focus: http://www.fpif.org/articles/review_the_american_way_of_war_how_bushs_wars_became_obamas

Obama and War: What Would Jesus Do? John W. Whitehead

andrew — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 04:57:53 +0000

Barack Obama came into the office of the presidency proclaiming hope and change and a personal adherence to the teachings of Jesus Christ, who preached a message of peace, love and nonviolence. Yet any hope that Obama’s professed religious beliefs might lead him to put an end to the endless wars was short-lived. Indeed, rather than dismantling the military empire that became a hallmark of George W. Bush’s presidency, Obama has continued to spread American troops around the globe.

Boasting the biggest war budget since World War II (the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have now passed the $1 trillion mark, with Congress recently approving an additional $37 billion in war funding), Obama’s war machine is wreaking havoc far and wide on communities and families devastated by mounting military and civilian casualties, on the already faltering economy, and on America’s once-noble standing in the world. Even the recent disclosure of more than 90,000 secret military files documenting a failing Afghanistan war riddled by undocumented civilian casualties has not managed to slow Obama’s steadfast march to war.

What collapsing empire looks like By Glenn Greenwald

andrew — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 04:51:25 +0000

As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay. But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make.Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights — or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State — that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability?

If you want more then go to: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/06/collapse/index.html

Howard Zinn (1922?2010): A Tribute to the Legendary Historian with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Wolf

andrew — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:35:45 +0000

We pay tribute to the late historian, writer and activist Howard Zinn who died suddenly on Wednesday of a heart attack at the age of 87. Howard Zinn?s classic work A People?s History of the United States changed the way we look at history in America. …

Weapons of Mass Democracy by Stephen Zunes

andrew — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:41:21 +0000

Nonviolent Resistance Is the Most Powerful Tactic Against Oppressive Regimes

On the outskirts of a desert town in the Moroccan-occupied territory of Western Sahara, about a dozen young activists are gathered. They are involved in their country?s long struggle for freedom. A group of foreigners?veterans of protracted resistance movements?is conducting a training session in the optimal use of a ?weapons system? that is increasingly deployed in struggles for freedom around the world. The workshop leaders pass out Arabic translations of writings on the theory and dynamics of revolutionary struggle and lead the participants in a series of exercises designed to enhance their strategic and tactical thinking. These trainers are not veterans of guerrilla warfare, however, but of unarmed insurrections against repressive regimes. The materials they hand out are not the words of Che Guevara, but of Gene Sharp, the former Harvard scholar who has pioneered the study of strategic nonviolent action. And the weapons they advocate employing are not guns and bombs, but strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, tax refusal, alternative media, and refusal to obey official orders.

Naomi Klein on Climate Debt: Why Rich Countries Should Pay Reparations To Poor Countries For The Climate Crisis.

andrew — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:54:32 +0000

With the Copenhagen climate summit two weeks away, best-selling journalist Naomi Klein examines the grass-roots movement behind the climate debate proposal that argues all the costs associated with adapting to a more hostile ecology?everything from building stronger sea walls to switching to cleaner, more expensive technologies?are the responsibility of the countries that created the crisis. Klein also discusses the 10th anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests and the 10th anniversary of her first book, ?No Logo.?

For More Read: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/23/naomi_klein_on_climate_debt_why

Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire

andrew — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:33:23 +0000

By Chalmers Johnson

However ambitious United States 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.

Chalmers Johnson is the author of Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004) and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006), and editor of Okinawa: Cold War Island (1999).

To Read More:

Obama?s empire – Catherine Lutz

andrew — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:29:57 +0000

In December 2008, shortly before being sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama pledged his belief that, “to ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad”, it was vital to maintain “the strongest military on the planet”. Unveiling his national security team, including George Bush’s defence secretary, Robert Gates, he said: “We also agree the strength of our military has to be combined with the wisdom and force of diplomacy, and that we are going to be committed to rebuilding and restrengthening alliances around the world to advance American interests and American security.”

Catherine Lutz is a professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

Is America Hooked on War? by Tom Engelhardt

andrew — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:04:15 +0000

“War is peace” was one of the memorable slogans on the facade of the Ministry of Truth, Minitrue in “Newspeak,” the language invented by George Orwell in 1948 for his dystopian novel 1984. Some 60 years later, a quarter-century after Orwell’s imagined future bit the dust, the phrase is, in a number of ways, eerily applicable to the United States.

Words and War

andrew — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:41:01 +0000

by Norman Solomon

8 June 2009

It takes at least tacit faith in massive violence to believe that after three decades of horrendous violence in Afghanistan, upping the violence there will improve the situation.

Despite the pronouncements from high Washington places that the problems of Afghanistan can?t be solved by military means, 90 percent of the spending for Afghanistan in the Obama administration?s current supplemental bill is military.

Often it seems that lofty words about war hopes are boilerplate efforts to make us feel better about an endless warfare state. Oratory and punditry laud the Pentagon?s fallen as noble victims of war, while enveloping its other victims in a haze of ambiguity or virtual nonexistence.

When last Sunday?s edition of the Washington Post printed the routine headline ?Iraq War Deaths,? the newspaper meant American deaths — to Washington?s ultra-savvy, the deaths that really count. The only numbers and names under the headline were American.

Ask for whom the bell tolls. That?s the implicit message — from top journalists and politicians alike.

A few weeks ago, some prominent U.S. news stories did emerge about Pentagon air strikes that killed perhaps a hundred Afghan civilians. But much of the emphasis was that such deaths could undermine the U.S. war effort. The most powerful media lenses do not correct the myopia when Uncle Sam?s vision is impaired by solipsism and narcissism.