*"Since 9/11, our country has undergone a transformation from republic to empire that may well prove irreversible. It suddenly became un-American to question the Bush administration's War on Terrorism, let alone a war on Iraq, or on the whole Axis of Evil.
Most Americans do not recognize- or do not want to recognize- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, they are often ignorant of the fact that their government garrisons the globe. They do not realize that a vast network of American military bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire.
This book is a guide to the American empire as it begins openly to spread its imperial wings. As of September 2001, the Department of Defense acknowledged at least 725 American military bases existed outside the United States. Actually, there are many more.
As militarism, the arrogance of power, and the euphemisms required to justify imperialism inevitably conflict with America's democratic structure of government and distort its culture and basic values, I fear that we will lose our country. Nowhere is it written that the U.S., in its guise as an empire dominating the world, must go on forever." - Excerpted from the Prologue
After the fall of the Soviet Union, America was left as the world's sole superpower. According to Chalmers Johnson, rather than reacting to this development as an opportunity to de-emphasize militarism, the U.S. has instead escalated its efforts to expand its influence around the planet. In his thought-provoking opus, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic, Johnson, Professor Emeritus at the University of California at San Diego, issues some dire warnings about the likely consequences, if this policy continues unchallenged and unabated.
For according to the author, something went seriously wrong with the country in the wake of 9/11, when it suddenly was deemed unpatriotic to question the President's unilateralist agenda of aggression. Virtually everyone in positions to challenge the administration in this regard failed to do so, capitulating to a compromise of American values in deference to the dictates of the Military- Industrial Complex.
Johnson states that, "Our newspapers began to read like official gazettes, television news simply gave up and followed the orders of its corporate owners, and the two political parties competed with each other in being obsequious to the White House." If allowed to continue to unchecked, he predicts that the U.S. will ultimately collapse, due to a combination of imperial overstretch, economic impracticalities and an inability to reform itself.
Though The Sorrows of Empire has just been published in paperback, this timely edition proves Chalmers Johnson to be even more prophetic, as more and more of the fears he first expressed a couple of years ago have come to be realized. A most informative and revealing read, and a surefire antidote to the social sedative that seems to have lulled the masses into a lemming-like acceptance of a fatal philosophy accelerating the tragic demise of Western Civilization.
Chalmers Johnson
Owl Books
Paperback, $16.00
400 pages
ISBN: 0-8050-7797-9