by Ron Paul
The Romans assumed that as long as the proconsuls and their military forces did not take over the republican Senate in Rome, the status quo of the Republic would be maintained.
Julius Caesar’s military genius, his loyal troops, and the material benefits they received though conquest, along with the Senate’s forbearance, permitted him to annex essentially all of Europe and part of Great Britain. Eventually, most of the known civilized world became part of the Roman Empire.
Some analogies can be made between the fall of the Roman Empire and the problems we face today in America. One thing for certain, though, is that the duration of the American republic and empire compared to those of the Romans will be much shorter. Geopolitical events today are moving rather swiftly compared to ancient times due to modern technology—weapons, speed of travel, and communications.
The Roman Republic lasted approximately 450 years before Octavius Caesar brought it to an end. The Roman Empire, if dated from time when Octavian was called the Exalted One in 29 BC, lasted until AD 476. Today’s military and CIA efforts are almost totally unrestrained by the U.S. Congress. The extent of our modern-day worldwide empire strongly suggests a similar pattern of the military independence enjoyed by Julius Caesar.
Much more sophisticated today, the CIA along with our military might have orchestrated military coups against governments we find dispensable. Iran-Contra-type financing is a tool used to circumvent any effort by Congress to restrain clandestine activity that promotes our empire.
Eighty billion dollars are spent on intelligence gathering to protect the American people, without much to show for it. Possible secret financing by the Federal Reserve, with loans and guarantees to our friends to assist empire building, is unconfirmed but would not be surprising.
Money spent by the CIA and other security agencies receives virtually no oversight by the U.S. Congress. When problems result as a consequence, the military is frequently called upon to bring about order and Congress is coerced into supporting the effort for supposed national security reasons.
These efforts have led to a worldwide presence of American troops. The American people have been brainwashed into accepting this for various reasons. Some Americans believe a great danger is lurking and have become convinced that security demands our ever-growing presence around the world.
Others, less fearful, believe we are only spreading our “goodness” and democracy out of a spirit of benevolence. Even if this were true, why would we spread such a message with armed military? Some still believe in a modern-day mercantilism that requires us to protect natural resources—such as oil—for national survival. Too few understand that the much greater threat to us is the deeply flawed policy that condones military occupation and a world empire.
But just as the military of Julius Caesar and the empire he forcefully implemented eventually led to the destruction of the 450-year-old Roman Republic, our current worldwide military presence invites the same result.
Though it took years for the Roman military empire to be built, it was clear that “passing the point of no return” was when the republic was doomed and the empire would reign. The question for us is, Have we crossed our Rubicon? Our future depends on a proper assessment and wise discussions as to what actions we should take. History will determine the outcome and the wisdom of our actions. We have only the present in which to decide on our course of action. History and an understanding of human nature should be used to guide us, but they do not provide all the answers.
We don’t have a geographic boundary to delineate our republic from the imminent danger of becoming an empire. But I cannot conceive how anyone can deny that the American Empire is not in charge of the world today. With the demise of the Soviet Empire in 1989, the United States quickly assumed the role of the worldwide administrator of military power, and the domination continues to expand and grow. Even with the financial crisis and our shrinking wealth and the exponential growth of debt, we remain the economic powerhouse of the world. The dollar still reigns as king for now. We have more military might than all the rest of the world put together. No one dares attack us in a conventional manner. The danger lies within, with our military and our economic excesses and our lost liberties.
If we indeed are an empire, is our republican form of government salvageable? If so, one thing is certain: it won’t take hundreds of years to complete the transition as it did with the Roman Republic and Empire. It’s more likely to be like the dissolution of the British Empire or the quick disappearance of the Soviet system.
All governments reflect the people’s attitude; no system lasts that cannot maintain popular support. Welfare and warfare brought us to where we are, and the majority remains enthralled with promises of bliss.
Pompey fought a military battle in an attempt to stop Caesar and lost his life for it. Today, we can still resist without a military or violent confrontation. To acquiesce and not resist in any way and escape to another part of the world is not a realistic option for most Americans. To confront the opposition and defend the rightness of the grand experiment in liberty is the only choice we have.
I am encouraged by Victor Hugo’s frequently quoted assessment regarding ideas and military powers: “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” We’re in an ideological struggle and one that is winnable, but it cannot be won without addressing the status of the American Empire. An empire, which requires perpetual war and preparation for war, is incompatible with a free society. Those who consider themselves to be opponents of big government and yet have an uncritical attitude toward militarism and war are either fooling themselves or haven’t thought enough about the problem. War feeds the growth of the state. The state is nourished on the liberties of the people. The choice is liberty or dictatorship (authoritarianism), republic or empire. The notion that we can cut government and maintain the empire is preposterous.
A country that supports preventive war, allows assassination of its own citizens, and endorses torture can hardly be called a republic. We now have troops stationed around the world. Our empire is every bit as pervasive as was the British Empire at its zenith. Though it was based on colonialism, ours is a military client-run empire, with troops in 135 countries and with more than 900 bases.
It is the atmosphere surrounding empires that prompts a redefinition of patriotism. Those who are critical of the policies of preventive wars and occupation are dismissed as being unpatriotic, and part of the “blame America” crowd. Interestingly, though, the soldiers who must fight the wars do not necessarily join in this chorus of discontents. There was a time when a willingness to criticize one’s own government when it was wrong was the very definition of patriotism.
Our foreign policy of interventionism has brought the worst out in those who support the empire.
One of the most disturbing incidents was when President George W. Bush made fun of himself at the Annual Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner, May 3, 2004. At this dinner he had a slide show mocking his running around the White House pretending to search for weapons of mass destruction, obviously referring to those that were never found in Iraq. To treat with such levity such a serious blunder (some call it a lie) that has caused so much death and destruction is beyond the pale. And those present at the dinner all had a good laugh over it.
Another episode of callous disregard for decency relating to foreign policy occurred when negative ads against Max Cleland were run by a bunch of chicken-hawks in his 2002 Senate reelection race. Depicting an individual who had lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam as being weak on defense was about as low as one can get in politics. The ad had Senator Cleland’s face morphed into Saddam Hussein’s while it implied that Cleland didn’t care about the security of the American people because he didn’t always vote with President Bush. Some Republicans even insisted that Max Cleland not be referred to as a war hero though he had been awarded a Silver Star for gallantry in action.
It can’t get much worse. To this day, it�
��s remarkable that Max Cleland has a positive attitude about life and America despite the vitriol that spewed from those who, in the name of patriotism, supported America’s aggressive wars.
Empires redefine patriotism just as welfare redefines charity; the two go together. The two ideas are but one idea: that the state should be master. When empires are rich—whether by looting the conquered or inflating the currency—the people grow dependent, work and produce less, and enjoy the “bread and circuses” or their “guns and butter” while drowning in consumer excesses, encouraged by moral decay and financed by debt. All this hastens the day of reckoning when the bills come due and the empire collapses. The republic dies unless a new generation is reinvigorated to secure our lost liberties and reject the addictive notion of empire.
Empires require the support of the people. In ancient times, glorious celebrations of military victory and conquest unified and were welcomed by the people. Conquering others meant slaves and confiscated wealth from the defeated. This meant less work, more leisure and personal excesses, and national prestige. A residual of this sentiment persists today. Death and injury are seen as a small price to pay for the “benefits” of our empire.
The endless praise offered to those who serve in the military—“thank you for your service” in defending the empire—is a required politically correct salutation to our “universal” soldiers. No, they never say thank you for “defending the empire”; it’s much more decent—it’s thank you for defending our freedoms, our Constitution, and for fighting “them” over there so we don’t have to fight them here at home. Though the wars we fight are now unconstitutional, the military is endlessly praised for defending our liberties and Constitution.
Many on the right who endorse the preventive-war mentality of overseas aggression are sincere in their belief that this effort is required to defeat the enemies of liberty. They refuse to see any connection between a policy of perpetual war and the loss of civil liberties at home. They believe their own rhetoric. This deception only facilitates big government, deficits, and the diminishment of individual liberty they say they are fighting to preserve. Tea Party activists will often claim to oppose the system of tax and spend, bailouts and socialism, but to the extent that they uncritically defend U.S. foreign policy, they are supporting all the policies they claim to be against.
To inspire a nation’s support and individual sacrifice for a flawed policy requires a dangerous enemy. But what happens when there is but one superpower and no hated enemy with which to incite the people and gain their support for constant militarism? In the Cold War, the U.S. government used the Soviets to generate the people’s support of empire building for “national security purposes.” And throughout the Cold War, the U.S. empire grew, liberty suffered, and debt skyrocketed. In the past decade, the real wealth of the middle class has declined as a consequence.
After the collapse of the Soviet system—a result of its flawed economic system, not a military defeat—instead of our getting a “peace dividend,” we were introduced to a new enemy, militant Islam, and a new place for building the American empire throughout the Middle East. In order to define our new nemesis, our government needed to schizophrenically flip-flop on previous alliances.
Our “friend” and ally Saddam Hussein had to be turned into a Hitlerian monster about to attack us with nonexistent nuclear weapons. After U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie gave him a green light to invade Kuwait over a border dispute and mineral rights, it became easy for the war propagandists to excite the American people into supporting what is a twenty-year war in the Middle East, redesigning the Middle East by fomenting civil wars and regime change and constant turmoil.
Why wouldn’t Saddam Hussein trust the United States in his military answer to an old conflict with a rival neighbor, since the United States supported him in his decadelong war against Iran? Various special interest groups joined this concerted effort. To create a new enemy against which we can unite, many interest groups came together: oil interests, neocon intellectuals, pro-war Christians, and “patriotic” Americans convinced that a great danger to our security existed and had to be stopped. Protecting “our” oil and our military presence around the world to prevent a new superpower from developing was an easy-to-sell policy to the American people.
The republic is on its last legs and the military approach of brute force is impractical and unsustainable for the twenty-first century. Though our weapons have become more sophisticated and more numerous, current warfare has changed from state control to stateless resistance, al Qaeda and Taliban style—a modern-day form of guerrilla resistance.
We are now faced with what William S. Lind has referred to as fourth-generation warfare. The idea is that those who see themselves as defending their homeland can, in fact, compete with the overweening force of a world power with a nuclear arsenal. We have more weapons and spend more money on our military and sophisticated surveillance technology than all the other nations put together; yet after ten years we have not located Osama bin Laden nor have we brought peace and stability to Iraq or Afghanistan.
We have spent a couple trillion dollars, and most importantly, sacrificed a lot more Americans than died on 9/11. Nearly 6,000 have been killed, and hundreds of thousands of physical and mental casualties have been sustained, in addition to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani citizens, only to see the Taliban and al Qaeda moving into Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. We have created a very unstable Iraq, now more aligned with the Iranians, as we turn control over to the Shiite Muslims. If our threats against Iran lead to a U.S.–Israeli preventive war against her, it will only drive Iran and Iraq closer to a growing financial giant—China.
Every time there’s a military confrontation, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen, even Somalia, “victory” is reported since so many “insurgents” were killed, and when examined closely there is an admission that many civilian casualties resulted as well, referred to as collateral damage. If it was always reported that we killed “freedom fighters” defending their homeland, which is closer to the truth, the American people would be outraged.
In the 1980s, at the urging of Ronald Reagan, the United States supported the mujahedeen in Afghanistan with which bin Laden aligned himself in an effort to defeat the Soviet invaders and occupiers. They were called freedom fighters. The Taliban is an outgrowth of this organization. It is a certainty that with every death of an Afghan citizen, many more are motivated to join the effort to rid their land of all foreign troops while boosting support for the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the recruiting of suicide bombers. The longer the wars go on, the greater is the danger to our nation’s security and our financial well-being.
Americans today, by a large majority, support the Republican and Democratic policy that hinges on fighting the global war on terrorism. But it’s actually not a war in the military or constitutional sense. There’s no precise enemy. There’s been no declaration of war. Terrorism is a tactic of criminals. Terrorism defined by the United States and international laws is a criminal act—not an act of war. Nevertheless, U.S. citizens have been conditioned to condone almost any action, including the first use of nuclear weapons against third-world countries, to pursue the war on terrorism out of fear that is deliberately generated by those who desire empire and despise liberty.
The war on terror is no more a true war than the wars on poverty, illiteracy, or drugs. It’s a mere metaphor to provide fear and intimidate people into sacrificing their liberties. I have actually heard a member of Congress say it’s all justified because “the people are too stupid to take care of themselves.” Stretching the truth and lying are permissible under the code of the “noble lie” endorsed by neoconservatives in order to secure the people’s support. Some members of Congress moan a little, but the funds are always made available for fear of being called un-American or a member of the “blame America” crowd and being characterized as weak on national defense.
Even imminent, national bankrup
tcy does not persuade Congress to resist the media and government propaganda promoting constant expansion of the worldwide military presence “defending” the empire. Supplemental war-funding bills are never defeated and are used to add on additional welfare spending.
The linchpin of the fearmongering is the hate and fear that can be generated by providing an explanation of why “they” hate us and why “they,” the terrorists, want to attack us. We are told that it’s because militant Islam is preoccupied with hate for and envy of Americans because of our freedoms and prosperity.
It is not infrequently that I hear members of Congress express their unqualified opinion that it is only the hate-filled Muslim religion that is the source of our problems, and we must pursue the war on terrorism at all costs, even if it does mean preventive war.
Some well-known neocons say they have never heard any other explanation than the religious hatred that they claim Islam generates. They stick to their argument that anyone who would suggest that our own policies contribute to suicide terrorism is committing virtual treason. Sadly, many Americans have been conditioned to believe this.
Demagoguing, lying, or denying that no unintentional consequences or blowback result from our invasion, occupation, and bombing of other nations, especially Arab and Muslim countries, presents the greatest danger to our security, freedom, and prosperity.
In all criminal acts, law enforcement officers immediately look for the motives that may have been involved, yet the neocons insist that the motivation is solely religious in nature. Those who want to blame only the Muslim religion absolutely don’t want to hear or even entertain the thought that terrorist attacks against us are related to the blowback phenomenon the CIA identified many years ago.