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The United States faces a real crisis. It's not just the military
failure of Bush's policies in Iraq or the discrediting of our armed
forces and intelligence agencies as corrupt, incompetent, and criminal.
It is above all our international isolation and disgrace because
of our contempt for the rule of law. Article six 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 has the authority to alter them or to choose whether
or not to abide by them. President Bush's invention of such hitherto
unknown categories as "illegal combatant," "evil-doer,"
or "bad guy" and his claim of a unilateral right to imprison
such persons indefinitely, without charging them or giving them
access to the courts and legal counsel, is a usurpation of the Constitution.
It is precisely why the United States should have ratified the treaty
establishing the International Criminal Court. It is intended to
deal not only with genuine terrorists and people like Saddam Hussein
but also with the kind of crimes President Bush has committed.
In
his speech of May 26 at New York University, which I urge you
all to read and download from MoveOn.org,
former Vice President Al Gore said, "We are less safe because
of [Bush's] policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation
against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228
years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of
contempt for any person, institution, or nation who disagrees with
him."
Despite endless hypocrisy about how we have brought freedom to the
people of Afghanistan and Iraq, we know that any citizens of those
countries who have come in contact with our armed forces and survived
have nonetheless had their lives ruined. The courageous, anonymous
Iraqi woman who edits the blog "Baghdad Burning," subtitled
"Girl blog from Iraq," writes (on May 7), "I sometimes
get emails 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."
Her reports on the Internet at riverbendblog.blogspot.com
are indispensable to an understanding of the disaster we have made
of a country that we invaded in the name of "preventive war."
You're thinking that I am only citing anti-Bush politicians like
Gore or highly literate but still unquestionably anti-American women
of Baghdad. OK. Let's look at the views of some of our ubiquitous
high-ranking military officers.
In his press conference of April 14, President Bush said repeatedly
that "We must stay the course in Iraq," and Democratic
challenger John Kerry agreed with him, arguing only that he would
do it better. The problem is that, as
former Centcom commander Gen. Anthony Zinni said to "60
Minutes" (May 23), "The course is headed over Niagara
Falls." Gen.
Joseph Hoar, a former head of the Marine Corps, has remarked,
"I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are
looking into the abyss." Zinni and Hoar are both retired officers.
But the active-duty Commander of the 82nd Airborne, Army Maj. Gen.
Charles Swannack, when
asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the
United States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think
strategically, we are." Marine Maj. Gen. William Whitlow wrote
in when
asked by the Washington Post (May 30), "A principal
tenet of forming a strategy -- have a 'war termination' phase --
was neglected. It is time for the president to ask those responsible
for the flawed Iraqi policy -- civilian and military -- to resign
from public service."
The point is that the torture scandals at Abu Ghraib prison, Chalabigate,
CIA Director Tenet's resignation, war profiteering by Cheney's Halliburton
Corporation, and other recent events have so discredited the United
States that we have only the choice of getting out or being thrown
out.
The Iraq war is very possibly the most serious self-inflicted wound
in the history of American foreign policy. It was caused by American
imperialism and militarism, which are the subjects of my new book
The
Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic.
Let me make clear what I mean by imperialism and militarism.
According to the Pentagon's annual inventory of real estate -- its
so-called Base Structure Report -- we have over 725 military bases
in some 132 countries around the world. This vast network of American
bases constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of military
enclaves rather than of colonies as in older forms of imperialism.
Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians,
teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations.
To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we maintain some thirteen
carrier task-forces, which constitute floating bases. We operate
numerous espionage bases not included in the Base Structure Report
to monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens,
are saying, faxing, or emailing to one another.
Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian industries, which
design and manufacture weapons for the armed forces or, like the
now well-publicized Kellogg, Brown & Root company, a subsidiary
of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston, undertake contract services
to build and maintain our outposts. One task of such contractors
is to keep uniformed members of the imperium housed in comfortable
quarters, well fed, amused, and supplied with enjoyable, affordable
vacation facilities.
For their occupants, these bases are not necessarily unpleasant
places to live and work. Military service today, which is voluntary,
bears almost no relation to the duties of a soldier during World
War II or the Korean or Vietnamese wars. Most chores like laundry,
KP ("kitchen police"), guard duty, and cleaning latrines
have been subcontracted to private military companies. Fully one-third,
about $30 billion, of the funds appropriated for the war in Iraq
are going into private American hands for exactly such services.
The military prefers bases that resemble small fundamentalist towns
in the Bible Belt rather than in the big population centers of the
United States. For example, even though more than 100,000 women
live on our overseas bases -- including women in the services, spouses,
and relatives of military personnel -- obtaining an abortion at
a local military hospital is prohibited. Since there are some 14,000
sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults each year in the military,
women who become pregnant overseas and want an abortion have no
choice but to come home at their own expense or try the local economy,
which cannot be either easy or pleasant in Baghdad or other parts
of our empire these days.
Our armed missionaries live in a closed-off, self-contained world
serviced by its own airline -- the Air Mobility Command -- that
links our outposts from Greenland to Australia. For generals and
admirals, the military provides seventy-one Learjets, thirteen Gulfstream
IIIs, and seventeen Cessna Citation luxury jets to fly them to such
spots as the armed forces' ski and vacation center at Garmisch in
the Bavarian Alps or to any of the 234 military golf courses the
Pentagon operates worldwide. Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld flies
around in his own personal Boeing 757, called a C-32A in the Air
Force.
The inseparable companion of imperialism is militarism. This refers
not to the defense of the country but to vested interests in the
military as a way of life, in the expansion of the military establishment
at the expense of civilian sectors of our government, and making
a living by working for the armed forces, military think tanks,
or the munitions industries. Service in our armed forces is no longer
an obligation of citizenship, as it was back in 1953 when I served
in the navy. Since 1973, it has been a career choice, one often
made by citizens trying to escape from one or another dead-end of
our society. That is why African-Americans are twice as well represented
in the Army as they are in our population and why fifty percent
of the women in the armed forces are from minorities. Army Pfc.
Jessica Lynch, who was wounded at Nasiriyah during the assault on
Baghdad, was asked by the media why she had joined the army. "I
couldn't get a job at Wal-Mart in Palestine, West Virginia,"
she replied. "I joined the Army to get out of my home town."
When she was recruited she was also told that as a supply clerk
she wouldn't be shot at.
Today, we have a professional, permanent standing army that costs
around three-quarters of a trillion dollars a year -- that is, about
$750 billion. This amount includes the annual Defense Department
appropriation for weapons and salaries of $425 billion, another
$75 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, $20 billion for nuclear weapons
in the Department of Energy, and at least $200 billion in pensions
and disability payments for our veterans. We are not paying for
these expenses but putting them on the tab. Since we are today running
the largest governmental and trade deficits in modern economic history,
our militarism threatens us with bankruptcy.
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The two most famous warnings in our history about militarism came
from two prominent generals who became presidents. The first was
by George Washington in his Farewell Address of September 1796.
He wrote, "Overgrown military establishments are under any
form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded
as particularly hostile to republican liberty." The key phrase
here is republican liberty (with a lower case 'r'). Washington was
referring to the division of labor in our government into executive,
legislative, and judicial branches and the establishment of checks
and balances among them. The intent was to prevent the concentration
of power in any one institution or person such that it or he could
exercise dictatorial power. Washington was warning us that standing
armies concentrate power in the executive branch. They lead to an
expansion of taxes and the growth of a national bureaucracy that
can lead to an imperial presidency, such as we have today. The division
of labor in our form of government is the main bulwark defending
our freedoms; if the enlargement of standing armies leads to a breakdown
in the balance of power, the Bill of Rights becomes nothing more
than a piece of paper.
Equally important to Washington's Farewell Address was that of President
Dwight Eisenhower in 1961. He warned us against the vested interests
that stand behind our huge military establishment. He wrote: "Our
military organization today bears little relation to that known
by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting
men of World War II or Korea. Until the latest of our world conflicts,
the United States had no armaments industry.... But now 3.5 million
men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.
We annually spend on military security more than the net income
of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense
military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American
experience.... In the councils of government we must guard against
the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,
by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let
the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic
processes. We should take nothing for granted."
Unfortunately, we Americans did not heed this warning and today
the Department of Defense and its supporting military-industrial
complex dominate our government. Of the money we spend on foreign
affairs, 93 percent is controlled by the Pentagon, only 7 percent
by the State Department. The biggest of all our munitions companies
is the Lockheed Martin Corporation. In the year prior to the outbreak
of the Iraq war, Lockheed Martin's profits rose by some 36 percent.
When war becomes this profitable, we can expect more of it.
In my book The Sorrows of Empire I devote the final chapter
to the likely consequences of our imperialism and militarism. These
are perpetual war, the end of the Republic, official lying and disinformation,
and bankruptcy. I go into detail on each, documenting how advanced
they are in our society. I hope you will read my analysis. My intent
is to mobilize inattentive citizens to information that I know they
don't have, because our government does everything in its power
to see that they don't, but that they need if they are not to lose
our Republic and the civil liberties it defends. But since this
is a gathering to support the candidacy of John Kerry, let me turn
to the case for him and ask whether the decline and fall of the
American empire can be averted.
The case for Kerry consists of four points. First, he is not a "chicken
hawk." It is a scandal that with the exception of Colin Powell
every single civilian leader of our government from the President
on down has no experience of either war or barracks life and that
the vice president obtained six deferments to avoid service in Vietnam.
When married men with children were ordered deferred, Dick Cheney
and his wife had a daughter nine months and a day later. Kerry has
a distinguished record of military service. This is important today
when the military establishment is easily the largest and most expensive
element of the executive branch.
Second, Kerry's stand as a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the
War is one of the most honorable aspects of his background. It is
a tragedy that we have become so militaristic he must disown the
courageous stand he took thirty-five years ago in order to be elected.
This reflects one of the major differences between our military
during the Vietnam War and our military today. Then it was a citizens'
army. Members of the armed forces were a democratic check on militarism
because they were not volunteers. They were naturally concerned
about the purposes of the war, how it would end, and whether their
government and officers were lying to them. Today we have a professional
military. People who serve in it are volunteers with a vested interest
in advancing their careers through armed conflict. So we are unlikely
to see an Iraq Veterans Against the War.
Third, a Kerry administration will be a check on the rampant secrecy
upon which our militarism thrives. Given his nineteen years of service
in the Senate, he is likely to end much of the secrecy that covers
up the destruction of the environment, the deployment of weapons
in outer space, our refusal to conserve fossil fuels, and many other
scandals. Last year the US government classified more than 14 million
new national security secrets, up from 11 million in the previous
year, and 8 million the year before. Ending the secrecy surrounding
the Department of Defense and the intelligence agencies would be
one of the most effective ways to restore democratic controls over
them.
Fourth, the main issue in the coming election is the Constitution
and the need to restore its integrity as the supreme law of the
land. It was concern over violations of the Constitution that energized
the Howard Dean campaign. Kerry will end the tenure of John Ashcroft
and end the secret abuse of prisoners in Federal prisons, in Iraq,
and at Guantánamo Bay. If we're lucky, he might even close
the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, which is where
we instruct military officers from Latin America in state terrorism.
For those even slightly interested in human rights, a Kerry victory
is indispensable.
Having said all this, let me nonetheless end by noting that the
political system may not be capable of saving the Republic. It is
hard to imagine that any president of either party could stand up
to the powerful vested interests surrounding the Pentagon and the
secret intelligence agencies. Given that forty percent of the defense
budget is secret and that all of the intelligence agencies' budgets
are secret, it is impossible for Congress to do effective oversight
of them even if it wanted to. This is not something that started
with the Bush administration. The Defense Department's "black
budgets" go back to the Manhattan Project of World War II to
build atomic bombs. The amounts spent on the intelligence agencies
have been secret ever since the CIA was created in 1947. The stipulation
in article 1, section 9, clause 7 of the Constitution that "a
regular statement and account of receipts and expenditures of all
public money shall be published from time to time" has not
been true in our country for more than fifty years.
A good example of the sorry state of oversight was the recent hearings
before the Senate Armed Services Committee concerning the military's
torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. The hearings were a travesty.
The committee, with the possible exception of Sen. McCain, treated
the secretary of defense and the military high command as if they
were beyond accountability to the representatives of the people.
The Army Times was more effective. Its editorial of May 17,
A
Failure of Leadership at the Highest Levels, demanded that Secretary
of Defense Rumsfeld and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen.
Richard Myers resign or be fired.
I believe that if the Republic is to be saved it will be as a result
of an upsurge of direct democracy. A little more than a year ago
some ten million people in all the genuine democracies on earth
demonstrated against the war in Iraq, against George Bush, and for
democracy. These were the largest demonstrations in British history
-- two million people in London -- but they also included 400,000
people in New York City and a million each in Berlin, Madrid, and
Rome. In late April we saw a powerful demonstration in Washington
DC of over a million for a woman's right to choose and to encourage
younger women to vote. A half-million demonstrated in Rome last
Friday against a visit by our Boy Emperor.
The first victory of this movement came on March 14 with the election
of Spanish prime minister José Zapatero. If democracy means
anything at all, it means that public opinion matters. Zapatero
understood that 80 percent of the Spanish people opposed Bush's
war in Iraq, and he immediately withdrew all Spanish forces. It's
a great pity that Kerry criticized Zapatero for this. We need to
duplicate the Spanish victory in Tony Blair's Britain, Silvio Berlusconi's
Italy, Junichiro Koizumi's Japan, and in our own country.
I intend to vote for Kerry because I believe he is the only electable
politician in America who might, like Zapatero in Spain, pay attention
to public opinion. If we can demonstrate that a majority of the
American people want peace, I believe that John Kerry will heed
the call.
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In
2000 Professor Johnson wrote the prescient bestseller, Blowback,
which described the dire consequences of the US's foreign policy
abroad. His most recent book