The Rise and Fall of the American Empire

Thanks to Wot is it good 4

Demise of GOP just took turn for the worse - Scarborough Country - MSNBC.com

Republican senators are now turning their rhetorical guns away from Democrats and toward one another. A few conservative Republican senators, whose votes usually cheer me up during bleak political times, are actually accusing Virginia’s senior senator, John Warner, of providing comfort to terrorists. The White House even got involved in the name calling when Tony Snow suggested Warner’s actions could embolden the likes of Osama Bin Laden. Story continues below ↓ advertisement The message from the Bush administration seems to be this: “Thanks for carrying our water on this miserable war for four years. Now we’re going accuse you of helping terrorists.”

How pathetic.

The entire strategy of the Bush Administration - from day ONE - has been to vilify critics rather than to engage them - and by "critics," I mean anyone who disagrees to the slightest extent. Joe Scarborough places himself squarely in the terrorist/liberal/peacenik camp with the following accurate observation:

Even if you agree with me that this war was worth fighting as long as we believed Saddam Hussein had WMD’s aimed at America, at some point you have to face the facts: the Bush administration was wrong about those weapons, wrong about the nuclear program, wrong about their refusal to quell rioting early, wrong about Bremer’s gutting of the Iraqi army and police force, wrong about refusing to kill or capture al Sadr in 2003, wrong to tell the generals not speak of the coming insurgency, wrong to stubbornly refuse to give generals the troops they needed to win this war, wrong to make the “Mission Accomplished” declaration, wrong for the VP to claim that the insurgency was in its death throes and wrong to push a surge plan that the president’s top generals opposed.

The list could continue for pages but I will be generous to the White House and leave it at that.

At some point, GOP senators and congressmen need to understand that this war is no longer a battle between Republican war heroes and Democratic 60s hippie freaks. The lines have now been blurred by Bush’s bungling war strategy. Now we find ourselves in a fight between war heroes and war heroes. Former secretaries of Navy and former Vietnam POWs. Conservative Republicans and protectors of the president.

And as I recall observing on my radio show Saturday, Download wma file even if you agree with the "Project for a New American Century's" "Rebuilding America's Defenses", there is a right way and a wrong way to go about creating an American Empire. It was not the Legion's might that established and maintained that empire; it was good roads, reliable commerce and general prosperity that made it's more oppressive aspects tolerable to most folks.

In order to build and maintain an empire that is more than fleeting, one has to be clearly superior to the alternative. In that we have failed utterly.

I of course oppose the idea of empire - the time for empires is long gone. They bring no benefits to the table that are not better achieved in simpler, less expensive and far less violent ways. In point of fact, there is no great profit in supporting an empire - and a great deal of both tangible and intangible wealth to lose.

This stark reality overcomes all else; if more than 70 percent of the privileged citizens of the Empire's heart disapprove of it's running, then I'd say that the rest of the world has every reason to be skeptical about joining up. And I would add that should we be so foolish as to continue, the empire might become manifest - but the capital might well be in Europe, South America or China.

tag: American Empire, miserable failure, George W. Bush, PNAC, Neocons, unitary executive, commander in chief, cause for impeachment