Nemesis—The Last Days of the American Republic

The best summation I've read on the political underpinnings of the fall of Rome, the first republic to suffer collapse due to overstretch. I understood the overstretch part, but I did not understand the role that Cesar played in overextending the empire and the role his nephew Cesar Augustus played in transforming the republic, with its checks and balances that insured democracy, to one of a military dictatorship and to the creation of himself as emperor much as George W. is doing today in the ongoing transformation of our democracy into a military dictatorship and perpetual war-making machine.

He fears that this warmongering will eventually bankrupt us and lead to economic collapse, a very real fear especially since no one has any idea how much money the pentagon is actually sucking up, not to mention the CIA, the president's private army. Our defense industry is shoring up the economy as it is. And with China and Japan lending us money we're relying on the kindness of strangers. The Blanche Dubois economy as one wit put it. Chalmers does not mention that the dollar is used to buy oil, said to be another reason countries honor our worthless dollar.

I was amused to learn in his chapter on space weapons that garbage in space is our chief worry because a piece of junk could knock out all sorts of communications satellites causing misunderstandings about who might have been attacking who by blowing up said satelite. Lot of satellite politics I didn't know about that demonstrate that we really should be devoting ourselves to world cooperation via treaties, as others are doing, rather than world domination with more high tech toys.

Explains how our nefarious activities regarding outsourcing of torture and CIA activity is watched by amateur plane spotters and witnesses in international airports pooling information. This does not endear us to international community.

All this detail did not, however, allow Chalmers to veer from his pet theory that 9/11 was the result of "blowback" from our controlling foreign policies and military colonialism. Despite his bucket-loads of facts, he can give no evidence that Osama Bin Laden did any of the things he is accused of. He simply leaps to conclusions without even bothering to state that he is speculating. He does give ofher evidence of "false flag" operations for the purpose of increasing the military budget.

(Using his facts I was able to feed my own pet theories of the impact of American presence in Thailand. For instance American anti-communist sentiment, he confirms, was expressed in the form of cash gifts (foreign aid) to any country willing to declare that they were carrying out anti-communist projects. Thus I can conclude that the Thai military government received money as a result of establishing policies to encourage the cutting down of the teak forest to "deter" communist insurgents hiding in the jungle. The resulting subsistence farming led to the exodus of farmer's sons to Bangkok to work in construction and their daughters to work in the sex trade (and sometimes visa versa). American service men in Thailand, during the Vietnam War, the existing sex trade grew by four times. (Said sex trade was originally created by the Japanese occupation during WWII.) Since foreign aid from the US is one of the most powerful tools used to manipulate the activities of developing countries, it wouldn't be difficult for the US to put a stop to the sex trade, drug trade, illegal logging, harsh prison conditions for American citizens overseas or any other activity US citizens might wish to put a stop to, but no, we are policing the world for non-humanitarian reasons.)

As Chalmers tells it, the US is interested mostly in establishing US military bases all over the planet in order to control the emergence of any potential super power as has been the agenda of the neo-cons since Reagan. The entire book was very illuminating on this need for relentless control. It is so infuriating to be part of this Darth Vader psychology, much of which has been manifested in policies implemented by the Bush Administration. We are indeed a changed country.

He notes that the number of large and medium size bases (38 in 2005) is just about the number of colonies the British had during the height of the British Empire and is close to the number of bases the Roman Empire had at its height. The US negotiates with the host country to make sure it is not held accountable for anything it or its servicemen do there to local citizens or the environment. This is the source of much contention in the example he gives of Japan, now a crucial base from which to control China. He recommends that the US dismantle the empire as the British did.