The Stupid Empire

Via Jonathan

Reprinted from brionmcclanahan.com

As the first leg of the American invasion force rolled through Iraq in 2003, Sergeant Brad Colbert of the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the United States Marine Corps leaned out the window of his Humvee and urged the Iraqi people to “vote Republican.” This moment was captured by the embedded reporter, Evan Wright, and made famous in a series of articles that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine and later in the HBO mini-series Generation Kill. (I recommend this series to anyone who wants a realistic view of the early stages of the war in Iraq. It is not for the faint of heart, however. The vulgarity and violence may turn some viewers off, but it also helps explain why people in other parts of the world hate the United States.) Wright later recounted that Colbert was not making a joke; he firmly believed what he was saying. While this surprised Wright, it typifies the “stupid empire” of the Republican Party and progressives in general.

From the war to “end slavery” to the war to “liberate Iraq,” the United States has been waging war for the last one-hundred and fifty years to theoretically bring “liberty and democracy” to “heathen” parts of the world. These are, rhetorically, wars for “humanity’s sake,” but more than anything they bring a perverted form of empire, one in which United States taxpayers are on the hook for trillions of dollars with nothing to show for it except more war, higher taxes, inflation, and resentment from many of the people the military sought to “liberate.” Liberation becomes a relative term, and most of the people “freed” by the United States become dependents of the federal government or are betrayed by the loose promises of “freedom and democracy.”

More @ The Abbeville Institue