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"And the historian John Darwin's masterly After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405 accepts frankly, without any moralizing, that the United States is the most recent in a long series of transoceanic empires."
We are an empire folks. Accept it.
Now, are we any good at it? Well, more Americans in poverty than ever. The 1% have pulled so far ahead, the 2% are meaningless. In fact the 1% are meaningless.
Freedom, liberty and markets. Those are our state religions.
We are so fanatical about freedom, that we will arm your grandma in her church to protect her from an active shooter.
We believe in liberty so much we have the most people in jail, by far of any country.
We hold markets so dear, we have allowed the 1% of the 1% to make the 2% of the country wealth irrelevant in income gaps.
The United States is not an empire. When lying, hypocritical liberal vermin said that it was, they lied.
We are not protecting these sites, nor the rights of the millions affected by ISIS, because we are not an empire, and the majoirty of Americans living in this republic have decided that it is none of our business and have decided to back a president that acts acccordingly.
No empire here, just a republic that functions surpisingly well desptie the crying and accusations towards every politician as being "worse than Hilter."
Ha! Who is it that claims EVERY politician is worse than Hitler? A town mayor is a politician. School board members are as well. A Sheriff is a politician though a chief of police is an appointee.
Worst empires? How far back? I have only seen mention of recent past. What empires were in power during the bronze age? When did Rome come into power? French empire? Any middle eastern empires? I am not researching them at present nor am I scholarly fluent in the topic but I have studied history. How about some of the native peoples who existed in North and South America before the rest of the world found it? The Aztecs and Mayans were pretty ruthless peoples.
The Japanese, a small empire, are historically a waring people who made raids as well as war with China and other parts of the far east. They were ruled by kings as were most countries, Rome being a major exception.
How about Mao Zedong? How many of the assorted small countries abutting China aren't influenced by communism? Korea? Vietnam?
The Chinese lost a lot of it's heritage and they never left their homes to do so.
The US is an empire for the fact the military-industrial complex must have a reason for research, development and production of the newest, latest and greatest armaments on the face of the planet. They need to be used to warrant their existence and real life usage/testing helps them engineer and develop the next latest and greatest. To do so we must go around the globe and offer protection to countries as well as establish a military base - or two - in that country so we have access to the countries we war with. We are imperialistic in the fact the land our base sits on is US soil when established and not under that country's rule. We also give them money and influence their politics. We don't rule their people, we influence their rulers.
"And the historian John Darwin's masterly After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405 accepts frankly, without any moralizing, that the United States is the most recent in a long series of transoceanic empires."
We are an empire folks. Accept it.
Now, are we any good at it? Well, more Americans in poverty than ever. The 1% have pulled so far ahead, the 2% are meaningless. In fact the 1% are meaningless.
Freedom, liberty and markets. Those are our state religions.
We are so fanatical about freedom, that we will arm your grandma in her church to protect her from an active shooter.
We believe in liberty so much we have the most people in jail, by far of any country.
We hold markets so dear, we have allowed the 1% of the 1% to make the 2% of the country wealth irrelevant in income gaps.
This won't last people.
The USA is NOT an Empire, an Empire is an extensive group of states or countries ruled over by a single monarch, an oligarchy, or a sovereign state. What other 'countries' are ruled over by Washington apart from the USA?
The US meddles to ensure its dominance which is very much INTENTIONAL and as I said before acting by proxy does not absolve one of responsibility.
A mafia don can't argue with a judge that he bears no responsibility for the killing of a rival, because he did not carry out a specific execution personally as one of his heavies did it.
As for your Saddam point, don't make me laugh, Saddam stabilised the various different factions that made up Iraq. Between himself and Assad, ISIS would never have seen the light of day.
If you want to know what happens when a popular authoritarian leader is deposed just look at the factions that have arisen in the power vacuum caused by the ousting of Gaddafi.
The current migration crisis in Europe is directly related to this foolish meddling. The perhaps it is a coincidence that the US has such a large concentration of bases in a region with the highest concentration of oil reserves in the world..?
I don't get the mafia analogy - the mafia doesn't work with proxies, quite the opposite in fact. Plus - that's a bit melodramatic.
For your other point. It's funny - you are actually giving us an argument why the US in fact needs to meddle. Forget about the cause of ISIS - you can argue the "if this didn't happen..." until the sun goes down - if Al Queda didn't exist, if the Soviet Union did not invade Afhiganistan, if the PLO never was in existence, if Israel never came to being, if WW2 never happened....you can go back to the founding of Islam with this argument. Forget that. The Middle East is screwed up, will always be screwed up.
However....the current US administration now seems to have a policy of not meddling - in Syria, in Libya, in Egypt...and look what a mess Arab Spring has become. The current crisis is the result of us NOT meddling.
Forget about ISIS, the Syrian Civil war has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands by the hands of Assad. Now lets bring in ISIS - I will play a "what if we meddled" game with you - what if we meddled in the Syrian civil war and gave the moderate rebels the proper weapons to defend themselves against Assad's regime before the radical elements from Iraq got involved? What if we really wanted to defeat ISIS and put boots on the ground? What if we supported our ally in Egypt instead of turning our back on him? What if we helped the "arab spring" countries? What if we got involved in the Iran demonstrations against it's government 6 years ago? Would it be better or worse? Who knows. There is a strong argument that if we "meddled" in Syria earlier we would not have the ISIS problem today.
If by "worst" you mean most inept, then probably so.
Yes, Not the number of deaths. We all know people used to come in and destroy whole towns. Sometimes I wonder if "history" exaggerates though because there are only so many people who are capable and willing to murder for fun. Normal people would have acted just like they do today and not have participated.
Now the empire game is we leave the town and people in tact, but enforce democracy, freedom and markets. There was an operation Iraqi freedom, and we can all see this operation was rejected by the Iraqi. That is a major problem for the empire.
Plus, like I say the homefront itself isn't exactly stable.
"And the historian John Darwin's masterly After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405 accepts frankly, without any moralizing, that the United States is the most recent in a long series of transoceanic empires."
We are an empire folks. Accept it.
Now, are we any good at it? Well, more Americans in poverty than ever. The 1% have pulled so far ahead, the 2% are meaningless. In fact the 1% are meaningless.
Freedom, liberty and markets. Those are our state religions.
We are so fanatical about freedom, that we will arm your grandma in her church to protect her from an active shooter.
We believe in liberty so much we have the most people in jail, by far of any country.
We hold markets so dear, we have allowed the 1% of the 1% to make the 2% of the country wealth irrelevant in income gaps.
This won't last people.
There's no way in hell that the United States is actually an empire. We can be sure that we have territories like Puerto Rico and Guam, but we don't really own anything that's actually another country.
"And the historian John Darwin's masterly After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405 accepts frankly, without any moralizing, that the United States is the most recent in a long series of transoceanic empires."
What was the sentence before it? I will tell you:
"The historian Niall Ferguson suggested in Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World that British colonialism brought valuable experience in parliamentary and economic practices to the United Kingdom's colonies, and he deplored the United States' apparent unwillingness to take on the long burden of tutelage. The writer James Traub, among others, has suggested that Washington should intervene in central Africa to stop civil war and genocide -- even if doing so would awake concerns about U.S. imperialism."
You are taking quotes out of context, not understanding it, to match your agenda. Yes there is a dark side to imperialism, but the article addresses both points - the one above in contrast is from a British historian condemning the US as a world leader in fact NOT taking over the reigns of Empire building. The conclusion, the last paragraph, you should also read again - the lose term of Empire is now used for confederations as well as nations - The current Chinese (empire), Russian Federation (empire), the US (empire), and now the Euro countries (empire - which is by the way is having serious financial problems, but this article was written in 2010). One assumes then that the OAU and ASEAN are also "empires". The article concludes a warning that the world may be in serious danger with all these regional "empires" and no world power. So read it again, you are really missing the point (not that I agree with it all, but it's well written).
The article has nothing to do with internal crime, or poverty, or whatever complaint you have, which is really contradictory to most complaints people have about "empires" and "imperialism" anyways - and that is external exploitation. You can't start a topic saying that the US is this evil empire, being that the purpose of an empire is to exploit and pillage it's foreign subjects to make it's own citizens rich and crime free, then compliant how poor and crime ridden we are. It's like you are talking two different issues, almost like you have an agenda - the creating a unrelated issue and topic to address it.
But. seriously dude, if you have a complaint about poverty, crime, income distribution, whatever it is - Empire building is not the topic you want to address it in.
Last edited by Dd714; 09-03-2015 at 11:26 AM..
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And you didn't even mention Cuba!
