Why Living In The American Empire Isn't All That It's Cracked Up To Be

[FarCenter]

In his book, The Rule of Empires (2010), Timothy H. Parsons replaces the myth of the civilizing empire with the truth of the extractive empire. He describes the successes of the Romans, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Spanish in Peru, Napoleon in Italy, and the British in India and Kenya in extracting resources. To lower the cost of governing Kenya, the British instigated tribal consciousness and invented tribal customs that worked to British advantage.

Parsons does not examine the American empire, but in his introduction to the book he wonders whether America’s empire is really an empire as the Americans don’t seem to get any extractive benefits from it. After eight years of war and attempted occupation of Iraq, all Washington has for its efforts is several trillion dollars of additional debt and no Iraqi oil. After ten years of trillion dollar struggle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Washington has nothing to show for it except possibly some part of the drug trade that can be used to fund covert CIA operations.

America’s wars are very expensive. Bush and Obama have doubled the national debt, and the American people have no benefits from it. No riches, no bread and circuses flow to Americans from Washington’s wars. So what is it all about?

The answer is that Washington’s empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power. The US Constitution has been extracted in the interests of the Security State, and Americans’ incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1 percent. That is how the American Empire functions.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-empires-really-work-2012-4

[hifiguy]

1. Check out Morris Berman's books

for a thorough and sobering analysis of the inevitable decline and fall of the American Empire.

The Twilight of American Culture,
Dark Ages America, and
Why America Failed.

[izquierdista]

2. Americans can't even do empire right

At least the rest on the list brought a lot of loot home for themselves. America gives half the loot to the Forbes 400 (who put it in Swiss ban accounts) and ships the rest off to China.

[jwirr]

4. I guess they think bringing it home to the 1% is enough. Although I suspect the same happend for

Rome and for the British. The little guy just gets to pay. This prospective makes Empire an even worse idea. Waste of time and money. Except for the MIC.

[HughBeaumont]

3. "Bush AND Obama doubled the national debt"?

er . . .. no.



5 to 10 = Doubled.

10 to 15 != "doubled". While neither president has exactly been a friend to peace, President Obama's spending is due to Bewsh's shite decision making on the economy that gave the wealthy the keys to our kingdom while not giving back (and modern congressional blackmail with Bewsh's tax cuts). Let's not allow this myth to propagate.

[Hawkowl]

5. A snake eating its tail

That is how I envision the 1 percenters vision of America. It can't last forever. Cut off the head to save the tail.