[What follows is excerpted from a long article by Washington DC attorney Bruce Fein headlined The United States Empire which was published yesterday on the website of The Washington Times:]
If the United States is not an empire, the word has lost all meaning.
No sparrow falls in the forest that does not provoke a national security assessment and response.
At present, we are employing military force in six countries — Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
In 2011, we reduced Libya to rubble after Muammar Gaddafi did our bidding in abandoning weapons of mass destruction and in paying more than $1 billion to compensate for the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. (...)
We dot the planet with hundreds of military bases.
We police the oceans with aircraft carriers, submarines and battleships.
We dominate the skies with spy satellites, stealth aircraft, and hundreds of fighters and bombers.
We have outstanding economic sanctions against 20 nations for bad behavior.
We control cyberspace with the ubiquitous collection, retention, and search of electronic communications of friend and foe alike.
We expend $1 trillion annually on national security, a sum more than the collective defense expenditures of the rest of the world.
We honor secrecy more than transparency, a quest for a risk-free existence more than liberty.
We bedeck the presidency with the trappings of a Roman emperor, including a bloated Pretorian Guard and a White House staff approaching 500. Roads are closed and traffic stops whenever the president travels. (...)
In sum, the United States has become a full-fledged empire.
Acknowledging this truth is the first step to curing the disease. Otherwise, self-ruination will be our fate. As Abraham Lincoln presciently lectured: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
If the United States is not an empire, the word has lost all meaning.
No sparrow falls in the forest that does not provoke a national security assessment and response.
At present, we are employing military force in six countries — Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
In 2011, we reduced Libya to rubble after Muammar Gaddafi did our bidding in abandoning weapons of mass destruction and in paying more than $1 billion to compensate for the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. (...)
We dot the planet with hundreds of military bases.
We police the oceans with aircraft carriers, submarines and battleships.
We dominate the skies with spy satellites, stealth aircraft, and hundreds of fighters and bombers.
We have outstanding economic sanctions against 20 nations for bad behavior.
We control cyberspace with the ubiquitous collection, retention, and search of electronic communications of friend and foe alike.
We expend $1 trillion annually on national security, a sum more than the collective defense expenditures of the rest of the world.
We honor secrecy more than transparency, a quest for a risk-free existence more than liberty.
We bedeck the presidency with the trappings of a Roman emperor, including a bloated Pretorian Guard and a White House staff approaching 500. Roads are closed and traffic stops whenever the president travels. (...)
In sum, the United States has become a full-fledged empire.
Acknowledging this truth is the first step to curing the disease. Otherwise, self-ruination will be our fate. As Abraham Lincoln presciently lectured: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”