"It is happening because America failed to notice that due
to its arrogant display of ruthless power, some truly
bizarre alliances have emerged in response in recent years.
Fundamentalist Muslim countries like Iran are teaming up
with godless atheist communist nations like China and
Stalinist North Korea to trade oil, nuclear know-how, and
deadly missile systems. And with Iran and North Korea
rushing to produce nuclear arms, Russia and China refuse to
whole heartedly support any meaningful UN action to prevent
it."
This may be one of the more important
observations in the article. From a Chinese
geopolitical perspective, Iraq and Afghanistan
are to the US as the Soviet-Afghan war was to the
Soviets: a fatal draining of resources in a
conflict with a guerilla resistance movement.
It is interesting to note, however, that the
Soviet-Afghan war was not something the Soviets
wanted. It was forced on them when the CIA
financed and stirred up a fanatical
anti-progressive movement. Ironically both
'resource-draining' adventures have been US
initiatives. One cannot avoid entertaining the
possibility that those behind the US war in Iraq
have the intention of destroying the US economy.
That is the only scenario that allows those
people to be other than fools.
rkm
--------------------------------------------------------
Original source URL:
http://www.airdance.proboards50.com/index.cgi?board=anwrart&action=display&thread=1171021868
The Fall of the Roaming Empire
Post by Anwaar on Feb 9, 2007, 3:51pm
The Fall of the Roaming Empire
by Anwaar Hussain
The American imperial behemoth finally lies
panting at the sandaled feet of its nemesis, the
ragtag resistance fighters, in the sands of Iraq
and Afghanistan. Desperate attempts are on by the
deniers to infuse new life into the flagging
leviathan but alas, it is dying as sure a death
as that of its masters' dream. Albeit hideously
so, even its death is promising to be
spectacular. For the event will scatter far and
wide, bits and pieces of the myth of American
supremacy and the delusion of an empire.
Nothing can be sadder than the fact that a
country that welcomed to its bosom victims of the
abuse of other powers for centuries, finally
became the greatest abuser of power itself. And
in so doing, wrote its own epitaph.
The reason, as frequently is the case in the fall
of empires, will be imperial overreach--that
fatal roaming bug that spelled the end of most
empires. From Philippines to Vietnam to South
America to Afghanistan to Iraq and now to
IranAmerican Empire's inevitable journey toward
its grand finale suggests that it indeed has been
administered the concluding dose by the colonial
roaming bug.
Why it is happening is that America, drunk with
its military power, stayed glued to its strategy
of dominance while the world quietly passed her
by. In her inebriated state, she failed to notice
her rapid isolation and falling out of favor with
most of the rest of the world and that, sooner or
later, this universal dislike for Pax Americana
was bound to result in an almost universal
backlash.
It is happening because in far flung corners of
the world, it tried to roughly shove down its
targets' parched throats its economic, political,
and cultural packages with an un-oiled military
ramrod, resulting in a natural throwing up by the
subjects of this force-fed diet.
It is happening because America, riding bareback
on the 'God is on our side' moral conviction,
took on certain peoples who consider themselves
as 'God's most chosen people' with a certainty
that blowing up themselves and others for their
belief was a child's play for them. The obvious
result being that dialogue for problem solving
became the first casualty in this clash of
divinities. In the ensuing vicious game, the
other side naturally became evil and crushing and
exterminating in the name of God became the name
of the game.
It is happening because America forgot that many
other empires have had their day in the sun as
superpowers before which others trembled. But
today their crumbling ruins stand witnesses in
mute silence to the fact that none were sovereign
over the kingdoms of men for infinite times. All
came to sad, inglorious ends.
It is happening because America failed to pay
attention to the fact that Britain, its former
colonial master and demonstrably the greatest
empire the world has ever seen and where the sun
never set, stands so withered today that now it
hardly ever sees a sunrise. Within a generation
it was history.
It is happening because America failed to notice
that due to its arrogant display of ruthless
power, some truly bizarre alliances have emerged
in response in recent years. Fundamentalist
Muslim countries like Iran are teaming up with
godless atheist communist nations like China and
Stalinist North Korea to trade oil, nuclear
know-how, and deadly missile systems. And with
Iran and North Korea rushing to produce nuclear
arms, Russia and China refuse to whole heartedly
support any meaningful UN action to prevent it.
It is happening because in doggedly threatening
Iran, America absolutely refuses to see that most
empires decay because in the end not only does
the physical infrastructure become inadequate to
sustain the frontiers, there is inevitably a loss
of interest or will to sustain it due to hostile
actions by neighbors. Like termite they continue
to nibble away at the far edges.
It is happening because despite having a
Judeo-Christian leadership at the helm of its
command, it takes no heed of the warning
contained in The Old Testament's exclamation of,
"How are the mighty fallen!" That remains one of
the earliest recorded responses to the spinning
wheel of fortune.
The spectacle of faded civilizations gives one a
simultaneous sense of foreboding and nostalgia
along with other practical considerations. The
sense of history one gains from visiting a museum
is staggering. For therein lie artifacts and
remains from the great empires of history that
marched across the sands of time-Egypt, Israel,
Judah, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and
Rome. Objects from the reigns of ancient monarchs
like Hezekiah, Sennacherib, Shalmaneser,
Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great, and Herod
almost leap to life from the glassed cabinets in
dimly lit corridors of these museums.
As the Roaming American Empire does finally fall,
however, all that its king, George W. Bush, is
likely to add to that collection is a pair each
of Levis jeans, cowboy boots, and a Stetson hat.
The irony is that, just like Shelley, at some
point in future, a poet is likely to stumble upon
the irresistible antiquity of America's gloom and
doom in the rubble of old realms and like him
again conceive an ironic and admonitory epitaph :
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:/ Look on
my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
The epitaph of the American Empire, though, has
long been written by one George Sutherland, that
eminent US jurist and appointee to the US Supreme
court before the Second World War. It reads,
"The saddest epitaph which can be carved in
memory of a vanished freedom is that it was lost
because its possessors failed to stretch forth a
saving hand while there was still time."
Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain
--------------------------------------------------------
REFERENCES : COLLAPSE of the AMERICAN EMPIRE (from Janet Eaton):
(1) Kirkpatrick Sale. Imperial Entropy. Collapse of the American
Empire. Counterpunch. February 22, 2005
http://www.counterpunch.org/sale02222005.html
(2) William Rivers Pitt. The Third Stage of American Empire March
2003 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/030105Z.shtml
(3) Thom Hartman Review of After the Empire by Emmanuel Todd
http://www.buzzflash.com/hartmann/05/04/har05004.html
(4) The Conceited Empire - A historian credited with predicting the
downfall of the Soviet Union in the 1970s now says that the US has
been on its way out for the last decade
http://dominionpaper.ca/features/2003/the_conceited_empire.html
------------------------------
[1] Kirkpatrick Sale. Imperial Entropy. Collapse of the American
Empire. Counterpunch. February 22, 2005
http://www.counterpunch.org/sale02222005.html
The American empire .. is showing multiple signs of its inability to
continue. And indeed it is now possible to contemplate, and openly
speculate about, its collapse.
I think it behooves us to examine seriously the ways in which the
U.S. system is so drastically imperilling itself that it will cause
not only the collapse of its worldwide empire but drastically alter
the nation itself on the domestic front.
In my reading of the history of empires, I have come up with four
reasons that almost always explain their collapse
(1) Environmental degradation.
(2) Economic meltdown
(3) Military overstretch
(4) Domestic dissent and upheaval
(1) Environmental degradation. Empires always end by destroying the
lands and waters they depend upon for survival, largely because they
build and farm and grow without limits, and ours is no exception,
even if we have yet to experience the worst of our assault on nature.
Science is in agreement that all important ecological indicators are
in decline and have been for decades
(2) Economic meltdown. Empires always depend on excessive resource
exploitation, usually derived from colonies farther and farther away
from the center, and eventually fall when the resources are exhausted
or become too expensive for all but the elite.
This is exactly the path we are on-peak oil extraction, for example,
is widely predicted to come in the next year or two-and our economy
is built entirely on a fragile system in which the world produces and
we, by and large, consume
(3) Military overstretch. Empires, because they are by definition
colonizers, are always forced to extend their military reach farther
and farther, and enlarge it against unwilling colonies more and more,
until coffers are exhausted, communication lines are overextended,
troops are unreliable, and the periphery resists and ultimately
revolts. The American empire, which began its worldwide reach well
before Bush II, now has some 446,000 active troops at more than 725
acknowledged (and any number secret) bases in at least 38 countries
around the world, plus a formal "military presence" in no less than
153 countries
(4) Finally, domestic dissent and upheaval. Traditional empires end
up collapsing from within as well as often being attacked from
without, and so far the level of dissent within the U.S. has not
reached the point of rebellion or secession- because of
the increasing repression of dissent and
the escalation of fear in the name of "homeland security" and
to the success of our modern version of bread and circuses, a unique
combination of entertainment, sports, television, internet sex and
games, consumption, drugs, liquor, and religion that effectively
deadens the general public into stupor.
Those four processes by which empires always eventually fall seem to
me to be inescapably operative, in varying degrees, in this latest
empire. And I think a combination of several or all of them will
bring about its collapse within the next 15 years or so.
Sale believes there is no chance to escape the collapse of the
American Empire because Americans will cling to the values that made
them great- capitalism, iindividualism, nationalism, technophilia,
and humanism (as the dominance of humans over nature) which will only
serve to exacerbate the collapse.
____________________________________________
Kirkpatrick Sale. Imperial Entropy. Collapse of the American
Empire. Counterpunch. February 22, 2005
http://www.counterpunch.org/sale02222005.html
<><><><><>
(2) William Rivers Pitt. The Third Stage of American Empire March
2003 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/030105Z.shtml
There have been three stages of American empire since the creation of
this nation. Each has fed the other, and each has been established
and fortified by war. More importantly, each has been fortified by
the vast profits derived by the few in the making of war. The first
two stages did not collapse, so much as they were absorbed by the
next iteration, carrying over all circumstances and attendant
difficulties. We exist today within the third stage of empire, one
that is sick at the core.
It seems all too clear that this third American empire is threatening
to collapse under its own ponderous weight. ... The American military
is proving itself to be incapable of sustaining the unreasonable
demands being placed upon it. .... The American economy, sustained
for sixty years by petroleum and war, stands at grave risk of being
subsumed by both.
Perhaps, someday, a powerful society will rise that understands the
lessons of history. Empires fall, always. They consume themselves,
slowly at first, but then with ever-increasing speed as military
solutions fail to resolve threats and drain the resources of the
core.
<><><><><><><>
[3] After the Empire by Emmanuel Todd
Review by Thom Hartmann
In Après l' empire ("After The Empire"), a runaway bestseller
across Europe and in Japan, Todd points out that many of the same
demographic and historic indicators that led him to boldly predict
the looming collapse of the Soviet system can now -- with some
variations that are even more alarming -- be applied to the United
States.
Every American should read this book. First, we must read it to
understand how Europe, Russia, China, and Japan (among others) view
us. Second, we must read it because its logic, facts, statistics,
and conclusions are unassailable.
The main thesis of Todd's book is that America is posturing, playing
the role of the leader of the "free world" and head of the new
American Empire, when, in fact, we are militarily, economically, and
morally bankrupt -- and the rest of the world knows it.
In fact, he suggests, much of the posturing is for the consumption of
the domestic American audience, as the rest of the world (with the
exception of a few dependent Third World nations) knows we're
already in decline and perhaps even ready to implode....
In "The Fragility of Tribute" chapter, Todd suggests the world won't -
- or can't -- long continue to support our "parasitic" lifestyle by
loaning us money to sell us goods, while we export our manufacturing
industries and hollow out our internal productivity. "The most likely
scenario" he sees as a result of this "is a stock market crash larger
than any we have experienced thus far that will be followed by a
meltdown of the dollar -- a one-two punch that will put an end to any
further delusions of 'empire' when it comes to the US economy."
<><><><><>
[4] The Conceited Empire - A historian credited with predicting the
downfall of the Soviet Union in the 1970s now says that the US has
been on its way out for the last decade
http://dominionpaper.ca/features/2003/the_conceited_empire.html
"The US leadership doesn't know anymore where to turn. They know that
they are monetarily dependant on the rest of the world, and they are
afraid of becoming inconsequential. There are no more Nazis and
Communists. While a demographic, democratic, and politically
stabilizing world recognizes that it is increasingly less dependant
on the US, America is discovering that it is increasingly dependant
on the rest of the world. That is the reason for the rush into
military action and adventures. It is classic. "
--
--------------------------------------------------------
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