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Voters Attack Bush's Empire

By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com. Posted November 8, 2006.


Yesterday's elections marked the beginning of the end of Bush's Global War on Terror; here's what to look for next as we take apart the imperial state.

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The wave -- and make no mistake, it's a global one -- has just crashed on our shores, soaking our imperial masters. It's a sight for sore eyes.

It's been a long time since we've seen an election like midterm 2006. After all, it's a truism of our politics that Americans are almost never driven to the polls by foreign-policy issues, no less by a single one that dominates everything else, no less by a catastrophic war (and the presidential approval ratings that go with it). This strange phenomenon has been building since the moment, in May 2003, that George W. Bush stood under that White-House-prepared "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared "major combat operations have ended."

That "Top Gun" stunt -- when a cocky President helped pilot an S-3B Viking sub reconnaissance Naval jet onto a carrier deck and emerged into the golden glow of "magic hour light" (as his handlers then called it) -- was meant to give him the necessary victory photos to launch his 2004 presidential reelection campaign. As it turned out, that moment was but the first "milestone" on the path to Iraqi, and finally electoral, hell. Within mere months, those photos would prove useless for anyone but liberal bloggers. By now, they seem like artifacts from another age. On the way to the present "precipice" (or are we already over the edge?), there have been other memorable "milestones" -- from the President's July 2003 petulant "bring ‘em on" taunt to Iraq's then forming insurgency to the Vice President's June 2005 "last throes" gaffe. All such statements have, by now, turned to dust in American mouths.

In the context of the history of great imperial powers, how remarkably quickly this has happened. An American President, ruling the last superpower on this or any other planet, and his party have been driven willy-nilly into global and domestic retreat a mere three-plus years after launching the invasion of their dreams, the one that was meant to start them on the path to controlling the planet -- and by one of the more ragtag minority rebellions imaginable. I'm speaking here, of course, of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, of perhaps 15,000 relatively lightly armed rebels whose main weapons have been the roadside bomb and the sniper's bullet. What a grim, bizarre spectacle it's been.

The Fall of the New Rome

But let's back up a moment. After such an election, a bit of history, however quick and potted, is in order -- in this case of the post-Cold War era of U.S. supremacy, now seemingly winding down. In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, to be followed by the relatively violence-free collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a brief moment of conceptual paralysis among leadership elites in this country, none of whom had even imagined the loss of the "Evil Empire" (in President Ronald Reagan's famous Star Wars-ian phrase) until it suddenly, miraculously evaporated. In this forgotten moment, we even heard hopeful mutterings about a "peace dividend" that would take all the extra military money that obviously was no longer needed to defend against a missing superpower and use it to rebuild America.

A mighty country, soon to be termed a "hyperpower," straddling the globe alone and without obvious enemies -- that should have been a formula for declaring victory (as many Cold Warriors promptly did) and acting accordingly (which none of them did). It should have been the moment for the Long Peace.

But in an enemy-less world, there was a small problem called the Pentagon (and the vast military-industrial complex that had grown up around it). So, while the peace-dividend-that-never-was vanished in the post-Cold-War morning fog, some new, prefab enemies did make their appearances with startling speed. They essentially had to.

These new dangers to our country were termed "rogue states," an obvious step or two down from a single Evil Empire. They were, in fact, so relatively weak militarily that you needed to pile them up into a conceptual heap to get an enemy that would keep an empire and its global network of bases in military restocking mode. Not too many years down the line, the Bush administration would indeed pile three of them up in just this way into the gloriously labeled "axis of evil"; this was that old Evil Empire rejiggered for midget powers (or alternatively the Axis powers of World War II shrunk to Mini-Me standards).


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Tom Engelhardt, editor of Tomdispatch.com, is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture.

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View:
Oppose Robert Gates, he is NO improvement over Rumsfeld
Posted by: LeftWright on Nov 8, 2006 11:06 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Can you say:

IRAN/CONTRA

Gates and DNI Negroponte have the blood of death squads all over their hands and will get along very well. This is not a good thing, brothers and sisters.

Oppose the Gates nomination.

Please contact your local House and Senate members, Speaker Pelosi and Rep. Murtha today and every day in opposition to Gates..


Speaker Pelosi
2371 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Rep. Murtha
2423 Rayburn HOB
Washington, DC 20515

Let's keep it non-violent, brothers and sisters. Let others be violent and show their true colors and desperation.

Stay in the light and fight for what's right.

The truth shall set us free. Love is the only way forward.

Be well.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Um, the empire still stands.
Posted by: BJT on Nov 8, 2006 12:56 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The empire will remain, only it will be semi-ruled by the Democrat faction of the Statist Megaparty.

Here are the signs to look for if you want to watch the empire crumble:

*The outing of the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency. This is beginning to happen now.

*The end of colossal foreign lending to the USA and the subsequent transfer of ownership of American assets to foreigners.

*Rampant inflation. Right now it is in the double digits.

*Finally, the collapse of the US Dollar. The Petro-Dollar arrangement is all that propped it up, and for now it is on life support by the world's central banks who have no alternative yet for a world reserve currency. They are moving into GOLD and EUROS. The collapse of the US Dollar might be disguised by an invented "Amero" North American Currency.

This empire asserted its dominance through its monetary policy, and has turned to military coercion to sustain it. It cannot last forever, and all fiat currencies on earth eventually fail. Ours is about 30 years old and about due for the reckoning.

If you do not want you economic well-being obliterated by the fall of the empire, please get some gold or silver.

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It was a tiring election.
Posted by: Artkansas on Nov 8, 2006 4:20 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I'm Bushed.

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xymphora
Posted by: rwa on Nov 8, 2006 5:30 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Rabbi Michael Lerner:

“Bush is unlikely to do anything dramatic to push Israel into ending the occupation of the West Bank or to creating a viable Palestinian state. There will be all kinds of statements that can be interpreted as distancing from Israel, but nothing in the way of real pressure. The Democratic Congress will be filled with AIPAC-influenced Democrats who want to protect Israel at all cost.”

The Lobby wants the United States to stay in Iraq until there is no chance of the country staying in one piece, which explains why the Democrats consistently run from an obvious winning anti-occupation position. Whatever the Lobby wants, the Democrats will provide.

The neocons all started out as Democrats, and only moved into the Republican fold as part of the Israeli plan, created in the late 1970’s, to create a Christian Zionist/Republican government, sympathetic to the concept of an Israeli Empire, in the United States. It is quite predictable that such a scheme would eventually wear out support for the Republicans, thus necessitating the Democrat fall-back position. Bush, who has some kind of insane religious vision for the Middle East, will call for a war, the media will dutifully, as always, follow along, and the Democrats in Congress will do what the Lobby tells them to do. The most obvious target is a renewed Israeli attack on Lebanon, this time involving Syria and direct American military help.

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bush's "empire"
Posted by: willymack on Nov 9, 2006 10:55 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
We can gloat, but not for long. Don't forget: the chimp-in-charge STILL has his finger on the nuclear trigger, and two months of unchecked power to do something really crazy. The rat is cornered and all the more dangerous for it. The crazies at the Pentagon who pulled off 9/11 probably feel threatened-maybe enough to stage another mass murder, or even take over in their own right. We're definitely not out of the woods, yet, but a good start has been made.

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» I am with you willymac Posted by: globalgypsy
Bill from Saginaw
Posted by: bill street on Nov 9, 2006 3:39 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The Swami's crystal ball says look for Bush to soon orchestrate a request from the commanders on the ground in Iraq for 50,000 more American troops. He'll tell Congress that to avoid a bloodbath, we must escalate the occupation short term, so as to insure "victory" and a phased withdrawal long term.

This tactical ploy is designed to divide the DLC beltway leadership from its grass roots antiwar base. Vote for the proposal, and the Democratic Party will truly share major blame for the for the ultimate debacle to come. Vote against the proposal, and those wimpy Dems are stabbing our valiant troops in the back again, just like they did in Vietnam.

Similarly, look for Bush to threaten to veto an increase in the minimum wage, unless the DLC Congress agrees to extend his tax cuts. Same ploy.

Also, keep an eye on the December deadline set by the IMF for the "government of Iraq" to sign over long term control of its future oil assets, particularly in the Kurdish north and undeveloped Anbar province.

Jim Baker personally has been working on this debt relief/oil allocation project for a long time. It's sure to be a not-so-subtle centerpiece of the bipartisan Baker Commission's eagerly anticipated recommendations, sagely advising us well intentioned, responsible Americans how we can stabilize this fledgling Middle East democracy, withdraw our forces, and all celebrate peace with honor.

Blood for oil, anyone?

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Hot time for another September 11
Posted by: ng1944 on Nov 10, 2006 5:32 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
MOSAD probably working an another September 11,
where by acciden all participants will be Iranians.
And all your stinky dems congress and Nancy Pelosy first,
will vote with two hands for war with Iran and to give this
idiot unlimited powers

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