Posted by Pinky.
Here's a nice follow-up to the last blog entry re: empires - a short list-based essay by Chalmers Johnson titled Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire, and Ten Steps to Take to Do So. Again, in the interest of making this entry as brief as possible, I've taken the liberty of stripping the list down to small-size (apologies to Dr. Johnson). Please read the complete essay here, or better yet, read his trilogy of books on the subject: Blowback, Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis.
Three basic reasons why we must liquidate our empire...
1. We Can No Longer Afford Our Postwar Expansionism
2. We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and It Will Help Bankrupt Us
3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases
10 Steps Toward Liquidating the Empire
1. We need to put a halt to the serious environmental damage done by our bases planet-wide.
2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of the "opportunity costs" that go with them.
3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism breeds the use of torture.
4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening train of camp followers, dependents, civilian employees of the Department of Defense, and hucksters — along with their expensive medical facilities, housing requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses, and so forth — that follow our military enclaves around the world.
5. We need to discredit the myth promoted by the military-industrial complex that our military establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs, scientific research, and defense.
6. As a self-respecting democratic nation, we need to stop being the world's largest exporter of arms and munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in the techniques of torture, military coups, and service as proxies for our imperialism.
7. We should abolish the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and other long-standing programs that promote militarism in our schools.
8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in our armed forces.
9. We need to reduce the size of our standing army.
10. We must give up our inappropriate reliance on military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy objectives.
[ full essay here ]
Maybe it's too obvious to be included in the above list, but my favorite reason to dismantle U.S. imperial structures is simply because they're vicious and immoral. Enough is enough.
Okay, Bunny and I leave for our walk now.
Much love to you,
pinky