Stirling Newberry delivers an insightful and cautionary lesson from history as to the state of our nation today, and a well-reasoned warning as to the potentially fatal trajectory of its current path.

We remember the Assyrian Empire, even if not by name, because of its impact on both Hebrew and Hellenic culture - it provided the prototype of the evil empire, with its fast rise, brutal peak and implosive collapse. Reading the Assyrian chronicles, with their accounts of flaying alive rebels and enemies and plastering their skins to the walls of cities, and then burning alive the maidens and young men, and looking at the friezes of them impaling populations that they warred upon, one realizes that, despite there being an Assyrian lobby today, the Assyrians by and large deserve their reputation for fearful slaughter and savagery beyond the norms even of a dark age.

Assyria is of interest today, however, not because of its legendary quality to many, and its claims to legitimacy - it amuses me that San Francisco, the city of peace, has a monument to a genocide-practicing empire - but because the patterns of behavior that the Assyrians engaged in, and the reasons for them, have parallels to our own.

As Newberry goes on to conclude….

While there is a sense that perhaps America will suffer a gentle decline as the British did, the alternative is that those who feel that they have been tormented by our actions will look to deliver the same fate to New York City or Washington, DC, that ancient rebellion delivered to Ninuwa - absolute devastation. In the world of asymmetrical threats, this is not mere idle speculation nor undue alarmism but a reasonable extrapolation that has been explored by such popular writers as Tom Clancy.

The Armies of Ashur could conquer the world, but they could not even hold the hearts and minds of their own people. In the end, these armies themselves spearheaded the revolt against the cult-king and his worship. In the end, it was the internal polarization driven by the religious system against the geo-political and economic realities that destroyed their state, and that is destroying ours.

Read The Full Article Here

Historian and former CIA official Chalmers Johnson strikes another bullseye with this piece in the TomDispatch about the nature and history of American empire, and its relation to the whole notion of and role of ‘markets’ and ‘democracy.’

There is something absurd and inherently false about one country trying to impose its system of government or its economic institutions on another. Such an enterprise amounts to a dictionary definition of imperialism. When what’s at issue is “democracy,” you have the fallacy of using the end to justify the mean? (making war on those to be democratized), and in the process the leaders of the missionary country are invariably infected with the sins of hubris, racism, and arrogance.

We Americans have long been guilty of these crimes. On the eve of our entry into World War I, William Jennings Bryan, President Woodrow Wilson’s first secretary of state, described the United States as “the supreme moral factor in the world’s progress and the accepted arbiter of the world’s disputes.” If there is one historical generalization that the passage of time has validated, it is that the world could not help being better off if the American president had not believed such nonsense and if the United States had minded its own business in the war between the British and German empires. We might well have avoided Nazism, the Bolshevik Revolution, and another thirty to forty years of the exploitation of India, Indonesia, Indochina, Algeria, Korea, the Philippines, Malaya, and virtually all of Africa by European, American, and Japanese imperialists.

We Americans prattle on endlessly about how our great crusade in the Middle East is about bestowing the blessings of democracy (in this case at the point of a bayonet and the receiving end of a JDAM). But this more on the lines of what Noam Chomsky described as ‘deterring democracy.’ He’s right. Here’s a money shot quote from Johnson’s piece…

We have done everything in our power to see that the Iraqis did not get a “free and fair election,” one in which the Shia majority could come to power and ally Iraq with Iran. As Noah Feldman, the Coalition Provisional Authority’s law advisor, put it in November 2003, “If you move too fast the wrong people could get elected.”

Read The Complete Article

Michael Schwartz writes in The TomDispatch that the…

“…rather comfortable portrait of the US as a bumbling, even thoroughly incompetent giant overwhelmed by unexpected forces tearing Iraqi society apart is strikingly inaccurate: Most of the death, destruction, and disorganization in the country has, at least in its origins, been a direct consequence of US efforts to forcibly institute an economic and social revolution, while using overwhelming force to suppress resistance to this project.”

This has all been reported on at some detail by folks like Naomi Klein with her excellent 2004 report “Baghdad Year Zero” and reports from the likes of Greg Palast on the corporate war profiteering going on in Iraq. This whole endeavor was a scam from the get go. It wasn’t about ‘freedom’ and ‘liberating’ Iraq. It was about instituting neo-liberal corporate economic policies from the ground up. A corporatist’s dream come true. Made possible by using the U.S. Marines as their own private Pinkerton enforcers. Some things never change, as Gen. Smedley Butler can tell you, way back in 1933 with his seminal work “War Is A Racket”.

Another part of what is really interesting about this report are the references to the ongoing intensity of action in Iraq, particularly the airstrikes. Totally under if not completely un-reported.

And then there is this…

A telling indicator of the condition of the Iraqi infrastructure and its immediate prospects can be found in descriptions of the elaborate embassy, referred to as “George W’s palace” by Baghdad residents, that the U.S. is now constructing inside the capital’s fortified Green Zone. According to the London Times, the $592 million structure will be “the biggest embassy on earth,” and will feature “impressive residences for the Ambassador and his deputy, six apartments for senior officials, and two huge office blocks for 8,000 staff to work in. There will be what is rumoured to be the biggest swimming pool in Iraq, a state-of-the-art gymnasium, a cinema, restaurants offering delicacies from favourite US food chains, tennis courts and a swish American Club for evening functions.”

Outpost of the empire. Your tax dollars at work.

Read The Full Report

Here are some insightful and well-researched pieces on the Committee on the Present Danger, what it is, who they are, and the threats it poses to the future of an open and free democratic republic. For those who want to understand the history of the players involved in the current administration, and how the current threats to the future of America’s constitutional republic have historical antecedents that stretch back for decades, should definitely read these reports.

A good piece by Jim Lobe from Common Dreams on the neocons reviving the vehicle of this organization dedicated, even if only inadvertently, to perpetual war and its national security state apparatus.

An article from 2001 from In These Times contributing editor Jason Vest on the history of Donald Rumsfeld and almost predicting the course of events that would transpire through his reign at the Pentagon and in the Bush administration.

Conservative Patrick Buchanan weighs in as well on the hypocrisy that this cabal of power reveals in what their true motivations are and the threats they pose to the nation.

All of this brings to mind Paul Craig Roberts’ essay on the NeoCons being a modern form of Jacobin radicalism, what with their revolutionary dictatorship relying on their own ‘Committee of Public Safety’ as an organ of state repression.

Why does the Bush Administration refuse to discuss withdrawing occupation forces from Iraq? Why is Halliburton, who landed the no-bid contracts to construct and maintain US military bases in Iraq, posting higher profits than ever before in its 86-year history? Why do these bases in Iraq resemble self-contained cities as much as military outposts? Dahr Jamail explores these questions and more.

Read His Expose Here

Excellent must read interviews with author, scholar and CIA veteran Chalmers Johnson published by Tomdispatch. His decades of intelligence and political experience, knowledge of history and academic discipline make Johnson one of the most insightful and effective analysts and critics of the current administration and the potentially devastating course America is set on, and the likely disastrous ramifications to the continued future of the republic. Of particular note are his points about the fiscal insolvency of the nation and the impact that will have on the nation’s future.

Something personally interesting with the history and biography of Johnson are his credentials as a veteran cold warrior, and his unwavering belief in the resistance to the USSR. He was even a supporter of the war in Vietnam at the time, as well as an advocate of the projection of American power in opposition to international communism. I, too, shared certain elements of support for those positions during that period, and like Johnson, saw the fall of the USSR as a crowning achievement and opportunity to scale back the enormous expenditure in armaments and militarization of our national security state.

But as he points out, that was not in the agenda of the ruling corporate classes which run our empire, and new enemies had to be created to justify the ever-expanding domination of global corporatism and the military-industrial complex.

It truly is a shameful sickness afflicting what is left of our republic.

Read the complete Tomdispatch interviews…
Part 1 - Cold Warrior In a Strange Land
Part 2 - Our Fading Republic

Another excellent treatise from one of America’s pre-eminent historians (and admittedly rare and oxymoronic breed, it seems. “American” and “historian”, something that doesn’t work well in the United States of Amnesia).

If you want some actual historical perspective on what is going on, and with an eye towards history being something that didn’t start in the 18th century, Read Here.

Jonathan Schell writes that the most critical question has been whether American democracy, severely eroded but still breathing, would bring down the modern and highly corrupt Republican machine, or whether the GOP machine - call it the budding one-party global empire - would bring down American democracy. Its not that the Democratic party isn’t partner to the corrosive elements of corporate corruption of our political system, but just that while they are corrupted by these influences, the modern GOP ARE those influences (the Abramoff issue being Exhibit A as evidence of this issue). Now perhaps it looks as if democracy, after years of decline, has hopefully gained the upper hand. We can only work and pray for this to be the case.

Read The Full Article Here

This is disturbing. If this is not an accurate picture of the current realities we are facing these days and the political stakes on the line, I would genuinely like to hear the case being made that that is indeed so. Are the facts presented here not actually facts?

Like John Pilger states here, there can be no change in the current state and course…

“…until we in the West look in the mirror and confront the true aims and narcissism of the power applied in our name, its extremes and terrorism. The traditional double-standard no longer works; there are now millions like Brian Haw, Maya Evans, John Catt and the man in the pin-striped suit, with his wreath. Looking in the mirror means understanding that a violent and undemocratic order is being imposed by those whose actions are little different from the actions of fascists. The difference used to be distance. Now they are bringing it home.”

Permanent Occupation
By Rep. Barbara Lee
In These Times

September 29th, 2005

No one disputes that the military bases are of a physically permanent character. The only question is whether Iraq will be under permanent US military occupation.

If you are inclined to believe the president, we will be in Iraq, in his words “as long as necessary, and not a day longer.” Members of the Bush administration, including the president, have been at pains to dispel any notion that they have plans for a permanent military presence in Iraq.
On April 13, 2004, President Bush said, “As a proud and independent people, Iraqis do not support an indefinite occupation and neither does America.”

On February 17, 2005, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, testifying before the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate, said, “We have no intention, at the present time, of putting permanent bases in Iraq.”

The circumstances on the ground, however, tell another story. On March 23, 2004, the Chicago Tribune reported on the construction of 14 “enduring bases” in Iraq. The May 22, 2005, Washington Post described the military’s plan to consolidate military personnel in Iraq into four massive “contingency operating bases.” According to the Congressional Research Service, Emergency Supplemental funds appropriated for military construction in Iraq for fiscal years 2001-2005 total more than $805 million, with the vast majority, more than $597 million, coming in the 2005 fiscal year.

Anyone familiar with the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) should be skeptical about the administration’s claims that it does not have plans for a permanent military presence in Iraq. PNAC, many of whose founders, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, went on to serve in the Bush administration, published a document in 2000 titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” It plainly cites the objective of an increased US military presence in the region as a rationale for invading Iraq: “While the unresolved conflict in Iraq provides the immediate justification [for US military presence], the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

In discussing the 14 “enduring bases” then under construction, Army Brig. Gen. Robert Pollman, chief engineer for base construction in Iraq, raised the question, “Is this a swap for the Saudi bases? I don’t know,” he told the Chicago Tribune. “When we talk about enduring bases here, we’re talking about the present operation, not in terms of America’s global strategic base. But this makes sense. It makes a lot of logical sense.”

No one disputes that many of the installations under construction are of a physically permanent character. The issue revolves around the policy question of whether Iraq will be under permanent US military occupation.

That is why I introduced H. Con. Res. 197, which would make it “the policy of the United States not to enter into any base agreement with the Government of Iraq that would lead to a permanent United States military presence in Iraq.”

This commonsense measure does two very important things. First, it explicitly states that the United States has no plans for a permanent military presence in Iraq and thus help to defuse the insurgency and improve the security situation on the ground.

Larry Diamond, former advisor to Paul Bremer, then head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, is a Hoover fellow and author of Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq. He writes:

We know from a variety of sources, private as well as public, that intense opposition to US plans to establish long-term military bases in Iraq is one of the most passionate motivations behind the insurgency. There are many different strands to the violent resistance that plagues Iraq: Islamist and secular, Sunni and Shiite, Baathist and non-Baathist, Iraqi and foreign. The one thing that unites these disparate elements is Iraqi (or broader pan-Arab) nationalism - resistance to what they see as a long-term project for imperial domination by the United States. Neutralizing this anti-imperial passion - by clearly stating that we do not intend to remain in Iraq indefinitely - is essential to winding down the insurgency.

Second, this bill allows those who have opposed this war from the outset to define one of the most critical components of an exit strategy - namely, that our troops actually exit. The Bush administration’s unwillingness to acknowledge their intentions in Iraq, coupled with the growing disapproval of their handling of the war and the increasing public support for withdrawing our troops, offer an immediate opportunity to define this debate.

Members of Congress disagree about when, and under what circumstances, our troops should be brought home, but you are not likely to find any member of Congress who would dare to publicly come out in support of staying in Iraq permanently.

It is a question that supporters of the president should be forced to answer. If they don’t support being in Iraq permanently, they should co-sponsor my bill, and put themselves on record. It is that simple.

—————————–

Rep. Barbara Lee is a member of the Progressive Caucus and represents California’s 9th Congressional District.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)