The Clipboard: The War State is No Republic

From an article¹:

What is that place in Washington? Rome? And is Bush the emperor? Why do we have our mercenary legions deployed around the world? To guard an empire? Whose empire? Certainly none that benefits the average American. A multinational corporate empire perhaps, but that should have nothing to do with the American government. Private corporations can hire their own gunmen and leg-breakers. (link)

First Raimondo (see below), now Reese. At this rate, Margolis will get in on it too and that'll be a "triple crown" of my favorite columnists, all saying the same thing. Read. Learn.

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Complete text of the article, The War State is No Republic, by Charley Reese

Except for the first four years, I've lived my entire life in a war state with a huge standing army, centralized power, a vast security apparatus and a growing contempt for the Constitution and the American tradition.

You ought to ask yourself why the United States has a standing army exceeded in size only by China's. You ought to ask yourself why American armed forces are stationed in more than 100 countries, even though we are not at war, nor are there any countries conceivably inclined to declare war on us.

You ought to ask yourself why, after communism collapsed, the United States insisted on keeping the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and even on expanding it. NATO had been set up for one reason and one reason only — to defend Western Europe against a Soviet invasion. Now there is no Soviet Union. The Red Army was withdrawn completely from Europe. The Warsaw Pact, the communist answer to NATO, was long ago dissolved.

Yet NATO is being expanded. Why is that? Whom do they expect will attack Europe? And why did the American people remain dumbly passive when the Clinton administration persuaded NATO, a purely defensive organization, to launch an offensive war against the little nation of Yugoslavia? And why is the Bush administration also pushing NATO to adopt a new offensive strategy?

You ought to ask yourself why it was Russia, and not the United States, which suggested that nuclear warheads withdrawn in the recent arms-control agreement be destroyed. You ought to ask yourself why the United States insisted that warheads be merely stored, so they could be redeployed if needed.

You ought to ask yourself why President Bush recently scrapped 50 years of American strategic policy by announcing that the United States would be willing to use nuclear weapons on a non-nuclear state and that our policy would henceforth be pre-emptive attacks.

What is that place in Washington? Rome? And is Bush the emperor? Why do we have our mercenary legions deployed around the world? To guard an empire? Whose empire? Certainly none that benefits the average American. A multinational corporate empire perhaps, but that should have nothing to do with the American government. Private corporations can hire their own gunmen and leg-breakers.

"What kind of government have you given us?" a lady asked Benjamin Franklin after they had drafted a new Constitution.

"Madam," said Franklin, "We have given you a republic — if you can keep it."

And, of course, we could not. The republic died at Appomattox, and it's been empire ever since. The modest government, the freedom, the old policy of armed neutrality, the practice of relying on a citizen army, have all been scrapped. An all-volunteer force is in fact a mercenary force. And our government is strutting about as if it were the policeman in charge of planet Earth.

Well, just remember, all empires fall. They fall because power corrupts, just as the British political philosopher said. They fall because they inevitably overextend themselves and go bankrupt. They fall because their citizens — reduced to passive watchers of games and consumers of bread — themselves become weak and corrupted.

Rome, too, got rid of its kings and for a while flourished as a republic, but greed and power eventually turned it into an empire. The only way we can avoid its fate is if a new generation of young leaders arises, leaders who are strong enough to lead the country back to the Constitution and its republican (little R) roots.

Are they out there? I don't know. I hope so. I have far more faith in American youth than in the baby boomer generation that is largely responsible for the mess we are in today. Eric Hoffer, the old waterfront philosopher, said in his last book that he was not at all sure America could survive the '60s generation. Neither am I.

reference=http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20020626/index.php