This is a clip from a new film, “Chalmers Johnson on American Hegemony,” from Cinema Libre Studios’ Speaking Freely series in which Johnson discusses “military Keynesianism” and imperial bankruptcy. Johnson has been one of the most lucid and intelligent writers over the past decade and beyond on the subject of America’s role as empire in the past few decades, especially since the publication of his prescient book “Blowback.” Read Johnson’s latest piece on the subject, “Going Bankrupt: The Debt Crisis Is Now the Greatest Threat to the American Republic” at Tomdispatch.com.

John Perkins, author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”, gives a brief background on the book and its meaning in this video from C-SPAN.

This is one of the best pieces I’ve yet read on the history of the Vietnam War, its futility, and its being resurrected as a comparative example to the current situation in Iraq, by George Bush and his acolytes no less. Tom Engelhardt, whose body of work is already impressive, lays out this tour de force of an analysis. It is insightful, with historical depth and perspective, tragic in its implications and desperately hopeful in its plea. This should be a must read in America’s high school history and social studies classes these days. (Do they still teach those?)

I can’t even begin to find a highlight from this work. I just recommend the entire piece, which is lengthy, but well worth the time. (They only flaw being his inadvertent reference to the end of the Vietnam War being 40 years ago, when it is actually only over 30, unless he is referring to the time of our big buildup period in Indochina).

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Chalmers Johnson delivers this essay, yet another of his devastatingly accurate and succinct diagnosis on the true, systemic nature of the problems afflicting America today.

Just a few money shot lines from this essay….

In politics, as in medicine, a cure based on a false diagnosis is almost always worthless, often worsening the condition that is supposed to be healed. The United States, today, suffers from a plethora of public ills. Most of them can be traced to the militarism and imperialism that have led to the near-collapse of our constitutional system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, none of the remedies proposed so far by American politicians or analysts addresses the root causes of the problem.

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If people actually believe a presidential election a year-and-a-half from now will significantly alter how the country is run, they have almost surely wasted their money. As Andrew Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism, puts it : “None of the Democrats vying to replace President Bush is doing so with the promise of reviving the system of check and balances…. The aim of the party out of power is not to cut the presidency down to size but to seize it, not to reduce the prerogatives of the executive branch but to regain them.”

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One major problem of the American social and political system is the failure of the press, especially television news, to inform the public about the true breadth of the unconstitutional activities of the executive branch. As Frederick A. O. Schwarz and Aziz Z. Huq, the authors of Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror, observe, “For the public to play its proper checking role at the ballot box, citizens must know what is done by the government in their names.”

Instead of uncovering administration lies and manipulations, the media actively promoted them. Yet the first amendment to the Constitution protects the press precisely so it can penetrate the secrecy that is the bureaucrat’s most powerful, self-protective weapon. As a result of this failure, democratic oversight of the government by an actively engaged citizenry did not - and could not - occur. The people of the United States became mere spectators as an array of ideological extremists, vested interests, and foreign operatives - including domestic neoconservatives, Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi exiles, the Israeli Lobby, the petroleum and automobile industries, warmongers and profiteers allied with the military-industrial complex, and the entrenched interests of the professional military establishment - essentially hijacked the government.

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I believe that there is only one solution to the crisis we face. The American people must make the decision to dismantle both the empire that has been created in their name and the huge (still growing) military establishment that undergirds it. It is a task at least comparable to that undertaken by the British government when, after World War II, it liquidated the British Empire. By doing so, Britain avoided the fate of the Roman Republic - becoming a domestic tyranny and losing its democracy, as would have been required if it had continued to try to dominate much of the world by force.

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Tom Engelhardt considers the new American embassy being built in Baghdad and writes Here…

As an outpost, this vast compound reeks of one thing: imperial impunity. It was never meant to be an embassy from a democracy that had liberated an oppressed land. From the first thought, the first sketch, it was to be the sort of imperial control-center suitable for the planet’s sole ‘hyperpower,’ dropped into the middle of the oil heartlands of the globe. It was to be Washington’s dream and Kansas City’s idea of a palace fit for an embattled American proconsul - or a khan.

This is a recommended piece for those interested in understanding the imperial designs of this whole venture in the Iraq. Its also great for quoting from the poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, a favorite of mine for its descriptive qualities of the futility of man’s hubris and arrogance (and it makes for a great b-side by The Stranglers’ bassist Jean-Jean Burnel).

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People seem to have had enough of being colonized by the empire. The U.S. has over 700 military installations around the world. The people of Italy are not about to acquiesce to the addition of one more. Good for them. How happy would you be if a foreign power came into your town and said they were going to build a military installation in it, and give themselves host of special rights and privileges in accordance with it as well?

“The people of Vicenza and the Americans have always been friends,” Cinzia said. “But when you invite a friend to your house and give them a room, it changes when they demand to have the whole house.”

As in much of the world, Vicenza is already overrun by American soldiers who drink too much, commit too many crimes, return from Iraq in mental anguish, and - since 9-11 - remain ever more isolated from the Italians. It’s the Vicentines’ city, but they are second-class citizens. If an Italian is waiting in line in a hospital emergency room, and a U.S. soldier comes in, the soldier can go straight to the front. And the economic argument so cynically used all over the United States to keep our economy based on war does not work in Vicenza: Italian tax payers are paying a large portion of the cost of their own occupation.

American taxpayers, on the other hand, are completely oblivious to the fact that they are paying hundreds of millions of dollars for the construction of a base that has enraged the nation of Italy and serves no purpose that the people of the United States have ever debated or had any say in. While the State Department and the Pentagon make our decisions for us, the Congress does have to approve the money. They’ve already approved half of the money for this base, and the rest is expected to be voted on by October.

The people of Vicenza have also had no say in this. They handed in 10,000 signatures and requested a referendum, but were denied. The Italian government has said it will permit the base, but it has not actually issued the construction permits. Leaders of the opposition movement met with the Minister of Defense who said that Italy was capable of saying No to the United States. But the U.S. ambassador gave Italy a deadline of January 19th to accept the base, and the Prime Minister announced his acceptance of it on a trip abroad on January 16th. While no permits have been issued, fiberoptic cables have been laid on the site, which activists have dug up and ripped out.

Enough empires. Time to fulfill the purpose of the American Revolution, which was an anti-corporate, anti-empire act of resistance, and end them all. Especially the one usurping the American flag.

And of course, what is most telling about this is how this a huge story in Europe, but is almost totally unheard of in America. Our wonderful media system comes through again.

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A good interview with Chalmers Johnson by Amy Goodman, producer and host of Democracy Now! Johnson, a former CIA analyst, distinguished scholar and best-selling author, argues that US military and economic overreach may actually lead to the nation’s collapse as a constitutional republic. Unfortunately, he makes an extremely compelling case, which we ignore at our own peril.

Chalmers Johnson delivers another essential history lesson for our woefully under-informed citizenry. His work should be required reading in every American high school history and social studies class.

I had set out to explain how exactly our government came to be so hated around the world. As a CIA term of tradecraft, “blowback” does not just mean retaliation for things our government has done to, and in, foreign countries. It refers specifically to retaliation for illegal operations carried out abroad that were kept totally secret from the American public. These operations have included the clandestine overthrow of governments various administrations did not like, the training of foreign militaries in the techniques of state terrorism, the rigging of elections in foreign countries, interference with the economic viability of countries that seemed to threaten the interests of influential American corporations, as well as the torture or assassination of selected foreigners. The fact that these actions were, at least originally, secret meant that when retaliation does come - as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001 - the American public is incapable of putting the events in context. Not surprisingly, then, Americans tend to support speedy acts of revenge intended to punish the actual, or alleged, perpetrators. These moments of lashing out, of course, only prepare the ground for yet another cycle of blowback.

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Whatever future developments may prove to be, my best guess is that the US will continue to maintain a facade of constitutional government and drift along until financial bankruptcy overtakes it. Of course, bankruptcy will not mean the literal end of the US any more than it did for Germany in 1923, China in 1948, or Argentina in 2001-2002. It might, in fact, open the way for an unexpected restoration of the American system - or for military rule, revolution, or simply some new development we cannot yet imagine.

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There’s more on this from Chalmers Johnson in his post on TPM Cafe

Its “Project For The New American Century 2.0.” This time they are calling it the Foundation For Defence of Democracies. Here are some of the featured members of it’s star-studded batting line up (though I imagine Dr. Kirkpatrick isn’t making many board meetings these days)….

Board of Directors
Steve Forbes
Dr. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
Jack Kemp

Distinguished Advisors
Judge Louis J. Freeh
Fmr. Director of the FBI
Sen. Joseph Lieberman
Newt Gingrich
R. James Woolsey

Board of Advisors
Gary Bauer
Bill Kristol
Donna Brazile
Hon. Richard D. Lamm
Rep. Eric Cantor
Rep. Jim Marshall
Rep. Eliot Engel
Sen. Zell Miller
Frank Gaffney
Richard Perle
Amb. Marc Ginsberg
Steven Pomerantz
Charles Jacobs
Sen. Charles E. Schumer
Charles Krauthammer

Of course, it would help to legitimize their endeavor if there were actually some bonafide legitimate working democracies in existence, particularly one here in the United States. But hey, why quibble over details? Not to say that there are not certain elements of democratic processes functioning within various states around the world, but to call any of them actual democracies is a stretch. It would also help if any of these people listed actually had a record of fighting for establishing and defending democratic rights and practices at home before leading a crusade to institute them elsewhere.

Its truly sad that it is coming to this. It didn’t have to be this way, but alas, the hubris of power and the megalomania of the neo-conservatives take their toll. Not that we should have ever had these kinds of delusional ambitions, but that those with them actually wrested the levers of power and perverted the whole notion of an American republic as one founded in 1776 in order to overthrow empire, actually morphing into the very thing we were born into existence to oppose. But then, this trend certainly didn’t start with the neo-cons, as it has been going on since the early days of the nation itself.

Here we can see the cost of Bush’s adventurism for American imperial power. In failing to understand the inherent limits of US global power consequent upon deeper, though seemingly unrecognised, longer-term global trends, the Bush administration hugely overestimated American power and thereby committed a gross act of imperial over-reach, for which subsequent administrations will pay a heavy price. Far from the US simply conjoining its pre-1989 power with that of the deceased USSR, it is increasingly confronted with a world marked by the growing power of a range of new national actors, notably - but by no means only - China, India and Brazil.

Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the US seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline. And, as a footnote, one might add that this is a task for which pragmatists are rather better suited than ideologues.

Our nation, our people and the future health and well-being (physically and financially) of our nation will be what suffers, unfortunately.

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