Chalmers Johnson is arguably the most important writer in the United States these days. His “Blowback” trilogy on American empire is a landmark classic.
He is a distinguished professor at the University of California at Berkeley. An old cold warrier, he is an East Asia specialist.
The first volume in what unexpectedly became a trilogy was Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (2000, rev. 2004). Blowback is a CIA term for the nasty consequences of meddling in other countries. This book was little noticed before 9/11. Afterwards, when much attention was directed to the question of “why they hate us,” the book became a classic.
The second volume is: The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2004). This book led to one of my favorite small social experiments. My small law firm has several U.S. citizens, all educated and mature adults, plus one law clerk from an African country. I made a prediction, and it came true. I called a mini-staff meeting and asked everybody how many military bases they think the United States maintains around the world. The Americans gave answers like: 5? 15? maybe 25? The African said: it must be over 1,000. Ding ding ding!
I mean really. WTF do we think we are, we Americans?!
More below the fold…
The third volume is: Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2007). It was just released this month.
Everybody needs to go to amazon.com right now and order it! Get multiple copies.
Here are four paragraphs from the prologue that show why I think this one short book is more effective than 10,000 diaries on the blogosphere:
Until the 2004 presidential election, ordinary citizens of the United States could at least claim that our foreign policy, including our illegal invasion of Iraq, was the work of George Bush’s administration and that we had not put him in office. In 2000, Bush lost the popular vote and was appointed president thanks to the intervention of the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision. In November 2004, regardless of claims about voter fraud, Bush won the popular vote by over 3.5 million ballots, making his wars ours. The political system failed not because we elected one candidate rather than another as president, since neither offered a responsible alternative to aggressive war and militarism, but because the election essentially endorsed and ratified the policies we had pursued since 9/11.
Whether Americans intended it or not, we are now seen around the world as having approved the torture of captives at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at Bagram Air Base in Kabul, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at secret prisons around the world, as well has having seconded Bush’s claim that, as a commander in chief in “wartime,” he is beyond all constraints of the Constitution or international law. We are now saddled with a rigged economy based on record-setting deficits, the most secretive and intrusive American government in memory, the pursuit of “preventive” war as a basis for foreign policy, and a potential epidemic of nuclear proliferation as other nations attempt to adjust to and defend themselves from our behavior, while our own, already staggering nuclear arsenal expends toward first-strike primacy.
The crisis the United States faces today is not just the military failure of Bush’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the discrediting of America’s intelligence agencies, or our government’s not-so-secret resort to torture and illegal imprisonment. It is above all a growing international distrust and disgust in the face of our contempt for the rule of law. Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution says, in part, “all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” The Geneva Conventions of 1949, covering the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians in wartime, are treaties the U.S. government promoted, signed, and ratified. They are therefore the supreme law of the land. Neither the president, nor the secretary of defense, nor the attorney general has the authority to alter them or to choose whether or not to abide by them so long as the Constitution has any meaning.
Despite the administration’s endless propaganda about bringing freedom and democracy to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, most citizens of those countries who have come into contact with our armed forced (and survived) have had their lives ruined. The courageous, anonymous young Iraqi woman who runs the Internet Web site Baghdad Burning wrote on May 7, 2004: “I don’t understand the ‘shock’ Americans claim to feel at the lurid pictures [from Abu Ghraib prison]. You’ve seen the troops break down doors and terrify women and children. . .curse, scream, push, pull, and throw people to the ground with a boot over their head. You’ve seen troops shoot civilians in cold blood. You’ve seen them bomb cities and towns. You’ve seen them burn cars and humans using tanks and helicopters. . . .I sometimes get e-mails asking me to propose solutions or make suggestions. Fine. Today’s lesson: don’t rape, don’t torture, don’t kill, and get out while you can–while it still looks like you have a choice. . . .Chaos? Civil war? We’ll take our chances–just take your puppets, your tanks, your smart weapons, your dumb politicians, your lies, your empty promises, your rapists, your sadistic torturers and go.”
He produces some of the finest rants ever written, combined with cool and magisterial scholarship. Again, I strongly encourage everybody to get this book.
Nemesis, of course, is “the goddess of retribution, who punishes human transgression of the natural, right order of things and the arrogance that causes it.” If God is just, there is Hell to pay in this country.
