Excerpts from Chalmers Johnson on C-SPAN Book TV discussing his new book "The Sorrows of Empire" (not exact, but close):
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In over 130 countries, the Base Structure Report lists 725 foreign military bases of the U.S.. It does not list the secrete bases like the ones in England disguised as RAF bases or Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo or the ones in Israel, Uzbekistan and Kirghizistan or the four new ones being constructed in Iraq - all to maintain the strategic needs of a global hegemony.
What does George W. and Kim Jong Il have in common? Neither would have risen above gas station attendant without the help of their daddies.
In the cold war and before, we were for the status quo and against the revisionist powers of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union and Maoist China. Today, we're the revisionist power, openly proclaiming ourselves as the New Rome. We are beyond good and evil, beyond needing friends, beyond the UN. As Wolfawitz would say, "We don't care whether they love us, so long as they fear us".
This is the Year-of-the-monkey, and I'd vote for the monkey (before Bush).
In 1991, we wrongly concluded that we won the cold war. We simply didn't lose it as badly as they (the Soviet Union) did - because we were richer than they were and it took us longer to do so (collapse). Absolutely nothing we did had anything to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union - least of all Reagan's Star Wars. We know that in detail. Gorbachev called Sakharov into the politburo to describe how to defeat an anti-ballistic missile defense and he gave a brilliant exposition. They spent not a Ruble on it (anti-anti-ballistic defense).
We're already across the Rubicon in terms of empire overstretch.
Blair is Bush's poodle and Koizumi is his cocker spaniel.
There are only two things you can see from outer space - the Chinese Great Wall and Camp Bondsteel – built by Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) division of Halliburton.. Why do we need such a large base to protect the Kosovars from the Serbs? It lies directly athwart the proposed pipeline across the Balkans - surveyed by Kellogg Brown & Root . This pipeline will allow (Caspian Sea) Oil to be pumped from the Black Sea to the Adriatic without going through the Bosporus, which limits the size of ships. We’re not in the Balkans to protect Kosovars, but for oil politics.
Not only do we use more petroleum than anyone else, we believe we can use it to exercise power over others in the future - such as China.
Baker Botts, the law firm of James Baker, has a law office in Baku Azerbaijan. There is not too much legal business to do in Baku. The American Ambassador to Kazakhstan drove her car around the capital with a bumper sticker saying, “Happiness is twin pipelines”. She was thinking of the Union Oil pipelines from Tadjikistan across Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea in Pakistan.
The Four Sorrows of Empire
1. Perpetual war. The President and vice President have identified between 50 and 60 countries, they would like to do regime change in using our military. Cheney first said fifty, and then in the West Point speech Bush raised him to sixty.
2. The loss of the republic. The irreversible damage to the constitution. James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers that the single most important article in the constitution is the one that gives the power to declare war exclusively to the elected representatives of the people. Never, under any circumstances should it be entrusted to a single man. The responsibility is too great. In October of 2002, our congress gave that power to a single man – on his say so, when he felt like it, including the use of nuclear weapons, if he cares to do so. This was done by selling the congress a false National Intelligence Estimate produced by the CIA which was ordered to find the intelligence to back up vice president Cheney’s speeches. Moreover, the President has invented a new category. I’m not kidding, and I’m not being sarcastic – it is known as bad guy. If the President declares you a bad guy, even though you are a native born citizen, you can be thrown into a Navel brig in Charleston, South Carolina and then keep you there. We are soon to find, in the next few months, whether or not, the Supreme Court that appointed this President, would care to address these issues.
3. Disinformation. It is lying to the public, by the government. It goes on every day with weapons of mass destruction - so called. Probably the most serious example was February 5th last year. The Secretary of State, Colin Powell in the UN security Council, with the Director of the Central Intelligence sitting like a potted plant behind him so his face appeared in any television picture – allegedly providing verisimilitude. … We now know that everything that Colin Powell said that day was a lie, and he had ample reason to know it was. That it was manufactured and wrong. There is not a serious informed statesman on Earth today that would believe a word said by the Secretary of State.of the United States. He has lost all credibility.
4. Bankruptcy. When you are spending a half trillion dollars a year on the military, 400 billion for the Defense Department budget, add Iraq and Afghanistan, plus another 20 billion in the Dept. of Energy for Atomic Energy, it comes out to about a half a trillion dollars a year. We can’t afford that. We not funding it. We are going deeply into debt. “Things that can’t go on forever don’t”. That’s what’s happening. Even if the American public is willing to kiss off its constitution, the economic crisis is likely to catch up with us, anyway. I don’t think we can afford just anything. One of the reasons I say this is because of the precedent of what happened to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union collapsed for three basic reasons. Extreme ideological rigidity in their domestic economic institutions – making it very hard to reform them, even though many in power knew what was needed. Do we have that in America? Well that’s what Enron, what the looting of pension funds, corruption in the mutual fund industry, distrust of the New York stock exchange - that’s what that’s all about. The second thing that brought down the Soviet Union was imperial overstretch. They simply couldn’t afford to meet us everywhere on Earth. Well what is imperial overstretch? I’d say 725 military bases in other peoples countries, is about as good definition of imperial overstretch as I could think of. And finally, inability to reform. No empire ever gives up. Even Gorbachev, who tried, was prevented by vested interests. Do I think those vested interests exist in the United States? That is the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us against. The best way to get rich in America if you are a politically well connected capitalist. is in the arms industry, is in the service of the armed forces. Of the 57 billion dollars just appropriated for Iraq, a good third of it is going into private hands. To maintain the arm forces in the field, the private companies do everything but pull the trigger.
History suggest that the end of empire will not be a soft landing. Militarism is not the same as national defense. No one is against national defense, but militarism is the glorification and profiting from the military as a way of life. Right now, of the amount of money spent on foreign affairs, 93% is spent by the Pentagon, and 7% by the State Department. That’s where our priorities are today.
Greece is one of the most anti-American countries on Earth. They remember the colonels. We put them in power. It was one of the most odious regimes on either side in the cold war.
We get information on the secret bases in England from a very interesting woman. She spends her time breaking into American military bases, and is charged with criminal trespass. As she goes to court, the US Embassy invariably drops all charges, so she will not be able to say what she found. She was last seen attaching an American flag upside down to the Buckingham Palace gate during the visit of the boy emperor this past autumn
We know how to deal with terrorists. We have a great deal of experience in this area, and it’s not mysterious. You do not use high tech military to go in and kick down doors, and holler “Peace and freedom” in English to a group of Arabic speakers. That’s what the terrorist anticipate – is a military overreaction - that will make the situation worse. And it’s arguably worse. Between 1993 and 2001, including 9-11, Al Qaeda carried out five major bombings world wide. Since that time in two years, down to and including the HSBC bank and against the British consulate, they have carried out 17. Rumsfeld said we don’t have a metric on whether we’re winning or losing in the war on terrorism. Well, we certainly do have a metric. We’re losing. We played directly into their hands. The only way to go about it is to separate the active terrorists from their passive supporters. So that they (the passive supporters) will then give you information about who the terrorist are. Then you can apprehend them, and bring them to trial. The only way to separate the activist from their passive supporters is by addressing the supporter’s grievances – by altering your foreign policy. In the aftermath of 9-11, we should have done three things. Withdrawn our troops from Saudi Arabia – which should never have been put there anyways. We should have stopped the 3 billion dollars of Pentagon money per annum to Israel until they withdrew from the West Bank. Militarily, Israel is not a small country. It has the largest fleet of F-16’s, after the United States. It is an atomic power. It is easily the most powerful country in the Middle East. I believe that would have made a difference. And then third, if we had begun to eliminate the leverage of the oil countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran by freeing ourselves from the dependency on petroleum for our automobiles. This would have increased our credibility. Then I believe Al Qaeda would have been of interest to chiefs of police these days. We would be well on our way to rounding them up. The French, Germans and Spaniards have done a wonderful job of rounding up the terrorists in Western Europe already.
Toyota is working day and night on a post petroleum automobile. We are not.
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There was a lot more in Chalmers discussion, but this is sufficient to give you the flavor. As I said at the beginning, this isn’t an exact transcript, but its close. In the above, way more than 95% is Chalmers and less than 5% is my editing and alteration for clarity. It was interesting to see his command of a vast amount of facts, and the way he had his ideas organized. But that is
JMO
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