Has anyone read "Sorrows of Empire"

Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic- by Chalmers Johnson?

If you haven't, do!

on C-SPAN 2, and was quite impressed.

If there are still libraries when his book is available there, I'll check out a copy.

In the meantime, I'd appreciate some sneak previews. ^_^

Kanary

Interview with Johnson
http://www.americanempireproject.com/johnson/johnson_interview.htm

I really appreciate this!

Kanary

unfortunately, I must read 2 other books first: "The New Pearl Harbor" by David Ray Griffin and "Worse than Watergate", by Dean.

I am in the middle of the "Whatever happened to globalization?" chapter, so I have not yet read what's likely to be the most frightening part, the final chapter.

What prompted me to buy the book was a CSPAN interview, specifically where he says we (progressives -- for that matter any Jeffersonian citizien) better plan our outs now. Buy that condo in Vancouver, get that second passport. Because blowback, internal repression, and martial law are just ahead.

In the words of gonzo HST, Big Dark Coming. From Chalmers book, I'd say it looks like it is already here.

He said there were so many things in it that he had
no idea about and that reading it was making
him really sad....
Was shocked to find out just HOW MANY military
bases we had globally.
BHN

was published.
http://www.presentdanger.org/papers/sorrows2003.html

"Four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in the Constitution of 1787. First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal "executive branch" of government into a military junta. Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens. All I have space for here is to touch briefly on three of these: endless war, the loss of Constitutional liberties, and financial ruin.

Allegedly in response to the attacks of al Qaeda on September 11, 2001, President Bush declared that the United States would dominate the world through absolute military superiority and wage preventive war against any possible competitor. He began to enunciate this doctrine in his June 1, 2002, speech to the cadets of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and spelled it out in his "National Security Strategy of the United States" of September 20, 2002.

At West Point, the president said that the United States had a unilateral right to overthrow any government in the world that it deemed a threat to American security. He argued that the United States must be prepared to wage the "war on terror" against as many as sixty countries if weapons of mass destruction are to be kept out of terrorists' hands. "We must take that battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge." Americans must be "ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives ... . In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act." Although Bush did not name every single one, his hit-list of sixty possible target countries was an escalation over Vice President Dick Cheney, who in November 2001, said that there were only "forty or fifty" countries that United States wanted to attack after eliminating the al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan."