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American exceptionalism had to die somewhere, and how fitting it is that it should breathe its last breath where civilization breathed its first. The sands of Mesopotamia, and the fertile terrain between its twin rivers, saw the rise of law, writing, and the concept of citizenship. Millenia later, it is the witness to the terminal decline of the nation that was meant to most perfectly crystallize the fundamentals of civilization and of liberty.
What a sad indictment of our nation that as soon as we had the material wealth to pursue the illusion of domination, we lept at it. This is not an indictment only of our morality and our sanity, but also of our intelligence, since no prior empire had as extensive a list of examples that should have dissuaded us from pursuing this ruinous course.
How delusional we have proven to be. We reject the notion that we have anything in common with prior empires, and in so doing only quicken our own demise. Prior empires, we tell ourselves, sought aggrandizement, material gain and prestige through aggression and intimidation. We on the other hand, are the paragons of benevolence, the crystallization of virtue. We invade to aid, we kill to uplift, we destroy to empower.
So deluded is our zeitgeist that we lack the ability to honestly assess our self-interest. The basis of our wealth and power is oil. If we were denied oil, our economy would crash and our armies would idle. Yet we cannot even bring ourselves to admit that we need oil and that we are prepared to kill to ensure that this precious commodity is supplied to us by people that we can come to some sort of accommodation with.
Since we could not come to an accommodation with Saddam Hussein, we overthrew him. Both the American government and the American people, however, were constitutionally incapable of admitting a rather unembarassing truth: oil is our lifeblood, and we'll kill to secure it. Instead, we told ourselves and the world that we ignored the UN to save the UN, that we destroyed Iraq to save Iraq, that we sacrificed our soldiers on the altar of liberty for all and for the right, over all, to define others' liberty for ourselves.
A more honest empire would have secured the oil fields and left, lacking the inclination to dictate to the Iraqis or the self-importance to convince itself that this was a worthy endeavor. It would not have spent 400 million dollars a day to ensure "freedom" to anyone, as if anyone could be made free by an occupation army and a torrential influx of foreign currency.
So deep runs the delusion that to admit to it is to admit to "defeat". This despite the fact that the obvious goal of the war, securing oil supplies, was achieved before the war even started, which could lead one to conclude that the war was unnecessary. Since we can not leave Iraq until we pacify Iraq, and since we can not pacify Iraq, we can never leave Iraq.
We justify this masochism in a manner that must surely ring bizarre to every other country on earth and that would surely seem just as self-destructive to every past empire. We tell ourselves, or at least a great many of us do, that we must "support the troops" because they are dying (but mostly killing) "for us". The first step on the path to sanity is to reject this notion out of hand.
American soldiers are not killing and dying in Iraq for "us", unless "us" is the board of Exxon or Halliburton. And that is no Marxist critique; objectively speaking, the Iraq War is the biggest financial fraud ever perpetrated on the American people. American soldiers are likewise not fighting for everyday citizens such as myself. They are not, to paraphrase the infantile twerps whose radio shows reach tens of millions "fighting for my freedoms".
Am I more free than I was before the invasion of Iraq? I certainly don't feel more free. Was Saddam Hussein poised to send his fedayeen to shut down newspapers in the United States and to infiltrate police forces with officers who would search homes and cars without probable cause? Anyone who finds fit to utter such nonsense has it incumbent upon them to explain how American soldiers in Iraq are fighting for "my freedom."
American soldiers are not making me "safer". They are not protecting my "way of life". They are not fighting for my "freedom". They are fighting for an illusion, they are killing for a reputation that does not deserve to be defended. They have kidnapped Iraq, and now they have killed it. Good intentions, which never really existed anyway, are no defense. Any crime carried out in the commission of a kidnapping aggravates that crime; it does not excuse it.
The lives of empire do not follow arcs, with equal inclines and declines. Empires, rather, fall with remarkable rapidity. If I could invent a time machine, I'd go back to 1983 and bet every "expert" in the world that the Soviet Union would not exist in 10 years. The American decline will be just as sudden, just as unforeseen by "experts", and just as terminal.
The tragedy is that it did not need to be this way. Uniquely endowed among all empires, the United States enjoys unparalleled wealth and might, a homeland physically invulnerable to conventional attack, and a continent full of temperate agricultural zones and indigenous industry.
And we have forsaken it all. For what? For cheaper can openers from China and for a war of aggression that has killed a million and that will kill a million more before we admit that we may have reason for pause.
What a sad indictment of our nation that as soon as we had the material wealth to pursue the illusion of domination, we lept at it. This is not an indictment only of our morality and our sanity, but also of our intelligence, since no prior empire had as extensive a list of examples that should have dissuaded us from pursuing this ruinous course.
How delusional we have proven to be. We reject the notion that we have anything in common with prior empires, and in so doing only quicken our own demise. Prior empires, we tell ourselves, sought aggrandizement, material gain and prestige through aggression and intimidation. We on the other hand, are the paragons of benevolence, the crystallization of virtue. We invade to aid, we kill to uplift, we destroy to empower.
So deluded is our zeitgeist that we lack the ability to honestly assess our self-interest. The basis of our wealth and power is oil. If we were denied oil, our economy would crash and our armies would idle. Yet we cannot even bring ourselves to admit that we need oil and that we are prepared to kill to ensure that this precious commodity is supplied to us by people that we can come to some sort of accommodation with.
Since we could not come to an accommodation with Saddam Hussein, we overthrew him. Both the American government and the American people, however, were constitutionally incapable of admitting a rather unembarassing truth: oil is our lifeblood, and we'll kill to secure it. Instead, we told ourselves and the world that we ignored the UN to save the UN, that we destroyed Iraq to save Iraq, that we sacrificed our soldiers on the altar of liberty for all and for the right, over all, to define others' liberty for ourselves.
A more honest empire would have secured the oil fields and left, lacking the inclination to dictate to the Iraqis or the self-importance to convince itself that this was a worthy endeavor. It would not have spent 400 million dollars a day to ensure "freedom" to anyone, as if anyone could be made free by an occupation army and a torrential influx of foreign currency.
So deep runs the delusion that to admit to it is to admit to "defeat". This despite the fact that the obvious goal of the war, securing oil supplies, was achieved before the war even started, which could lead one to conclude that the war was unnecessary. Since we can not leave Iraq until we pacify Iraq, and since we can not pacify Iraq, we can never leave Iraq.
We justify this masochism in a manner that must surely ring bizarre to every other country on earth and that would surely seem just as self-destructive to every past empire. We tell ourselves, or at least a great many of us do, that we must "support the troops" because they are dying (but mostly killing) "for us". The first step on the path to sanity is to reject this notion out of hand.
American soldiers are not killing and dying in Iraq for "us", unless "us" is the board of Exxon or Halliburton. And that is no Marxist critique; objectively speaking, the Iraq War is the biggest financial fraud ever perpetrated on the American people. American soldiers are likewise not fighting for everyday citizens such as myself. They are not, to paraphrase the infantile twerps whose radio shows reach tens of millions "fighting for my freedoms".
Am I more free than I was before the invasion of Iraq? I certainly don't feel more free. Was Saddam Hussein poised to send his fedayeen to shut down newspapers in the United States and to infiltrate police forces with officers who would search homes and cars without probable cause? Anyone who finds fit to utter such nonsense has it incumbent upon them to explain how American soldiers in Iraq are fighting for "my freedom."
American soldiers are not making me "safer". They are not protecting my "way of life". They are not fighting for my "freedom". They are fighting for an illusion, they are killing for a reputation that does not deserve to be defended. They have kidnapped Iraq, and now they have killed it. Good intentions, which never really existed anyway, are no defense. Any crime carried out in the commission of a kidnapping aggravates that crime; it does not excuse it.
The lives of empire do not follow arcs, with equal inclines and declines. Empires, rather, fall with remarkable rapidity. If I could invent a time machine, I'd go back to 1983 and bet every "expert" in the world that the Soviet Union would not exist in 10 years. The American decline will be just as sudden, just as unforeseen by "experts", and just as terminal.
The tragedy is that it did not need to be this way. Uniquely endowed among all empires, the United States enjoys unparalleled wealth and might, a homeland physically invulnerable to conventional attack, and a continent full of temperate agricultural zones and indigenous industry.
And we have forsaken it all. For what? For cheaper can openers from China and for a war of aggression that has killed a million and that will kill a million more before we admit that we may have reason for pause.
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