The sub-title is “Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic”.
One chapter in this book is called “Iraq Wars”. In that chapter, Johnson comments on Bush’s lies about the upcoming war. On October 7, 2002, Bush made up lies about Saddam (the homicidal dictator with WMDs) in a speech he gave in Cincinnati. He said that Saddam had a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical and biological weapons across broad areas. He then made the ridiculous claim that Saddam might target the US with these aerial vehicles. Of course, it was quite impossible for Saddam to get any such aerial vehicles to the USA. But what I find interesting about this lie is that the military under Bush was busy developing unmanned drones, which would turn out to be quite deadly in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Another lie he (and Rumsfeld) made up was that Saddam had connections with al Qaeda. Saddam had nothing to do with al Qaeda, but unfortunately, al Qaeda showed up in Iraq after the US troops took up residence. And even more unfortunately, that turned out to be quite deadly and destructive to the Iraqi people.
Johnson also pointed out that Bush and his administration made up several other lies about Iraq – one was that Saddam did not abide by UN resolutions. Of course, the country of Israel has violated more UN resolutions than anybody, and no one is proposing that we attack them for those violations. Another bullshit lie was the claim that we were going to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. Bush brought them the freedom of the grave and the democracy of death.
The war of aggression on Iraq had no legal justification and few allies. It was waged in the face of widespread world wide protest.
The sorrows of empire include imperialism and militarism. Our imperialism is not like the imperialism of former empires. We have military bases all over the planet and we certainly tell the governments of those countries what to do or not to do, and we have little regard for the native population, but we are not running their day to day lives and we are not collecting taxes from them. Instead, we pay the host countries where we set up our military bases.
Here are the sorrows of empire:
- state of perpetual war
- loss of democracy and constitutional rights at home (we have lost the fourth and sixth articles of the Bill of Rights)
- extensive propaganda, disinformation, and outright lies by officials, along with glorification of war and military legions
- bankruptcy, as we pour more money into wars and grandiose military projects and take money away from services (like education and health care) at home
The first three will lead to erosion of the Constitution and rule of law, but it is the last one that will create a crisis and get people’s attention. Permanent military occupations around the world are expensive. In light of what the US government spent on the financial crisis, I am guessing that the US has quite a way to go before the permanent military occupations and world domination will bankrupt us. The most serious damage from pursuing empire is what it does to Americans and our Constitution and laws. Empires come to an end, and the endings are not pleasant.
The solution that Johnson offers is that the people retake control of Congress and turn it back into a true democratic institution. Then we need to cut off the money to the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, and close down the overseas bases. In theory, the people could take control away from the armed forces and the military-industrial complex.
But frankly, that does not look likely to happen.
“When the government fears the people, there is liberty; when the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Although tyranny, because it needs no consent, may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.” - Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
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