full body scans
erosion of civil liberties
terrorist attacks
Americans with targets on their backs everywhere they go
Presidentially approved torture
endless wars
It's time we recognize all these things for what they are. They are taxes imposed, usually by Presidential fiat, upon Americans to support our world-wide empire. Would any of these things have happened or be necessary if we as a nation renounced empire and closed the hundreds of foreign bases we man the world over? Would any of these things have happened or be necessary if we as a nation stopped remaking the world in our image of "free markets," an effort that has led to the loss of nearly all American manufacturing jobs and provided means for corporations to avoid the costs of complying with American environmental and fair labor standards?
The history of the British Empire is well known but apparently little understood by our leaders. Are our leaders really surprised foreign cultures resent and will oppose, with whatever means they have available, the forced imposition upon them of our Western economic model? And that's all it is - a model; one way of economically structuring a society out of many possible ways to do so. Our political leaders and leading economists seem to think there is something divinely inspired about free market capitalism, "open" markets, etc. They impose adoption of this model with all the fervor of missionaries on a holy crusade. Meanwhile sharp businessmen use these market evangelicals, these political and academic tools, turning the fruits of their efforts into disaster and crony capitalism and rigged markets, the operation of which often occurs outside the reach of US laws. And the costs to support this madness, financial and otherwise, are spread across all of us.
Feel free to add to the list. My list just includes empire taxes imposed by George W. Bush's Administration. I no doubt have understated the costs every American is routinely asked to bear in order that a very few of our fellow citizens, many if not most of whom do their utmost to avoid direct taxation, can continue to live more lavishly than most of us can even imagine. The "profits" of empire and the national security state the empire necessitates, such as they are, flow to this very few while the costs are widely socialized, to every man woman and child in the US. A businessman's dream!
Our taxes are raised every time a new security measure is implemented without any rational discussion beforehand, every time a social program is cut in order to fund "defense" and wars, every time you pay for that new alignment caused by non maintained roads and lack of adequate mass transit, every time a brilliant young person cannot afford to go to college and cannot obtain federal/state financial support, every time - well, you get the picture. And the party of "tax cuts" knows no bounds in pursuit of these tax increases. The loyal opposition, loyal to the concept of empire, is little better.
It would be nice to hear a rational debate of our place in the world, empire, costs and benefits to both Americans and people the world over, and whether this madness should continue. Instead any attempt to question America's military posture across the globe and how we have proceeded with national security is hysterically dismissed as unAmerican, anti-military, etc. Maintaining the "defense" budget and accepting evermore intrusive government security measures and violations of our civil liberties is sacred, even to the point of throwing old folks out onto the street where, like any of us these days, they can be tasered at will.
It is a disgrace the debate over all these policies will not happen during elections, acceptance of the premise of empire and auto-saluting all things military or security related long ago became a prerequisite to involvement as a serious candidate for federal office. How many times have you heard Democratic and Republican candidates solemnly state "our disagreements end at the border?" It's high time to acknowledge that we need more, much more debate over US foreign policy and its implications for our domestic priorities, indeed for the Constitutional republic which, in pursuit and maintenance of empire, we seem determined to turn into a parody of itself.
I suspect our involvement in Afghanistan, I heard on NPR this morning it is now projected to last through at least 2014, will ultimately require a national reevaluation of empire just as it did for the Soviets a generation ago. One might have thought that in a democracy we would have gone about what I believe is the inevitable restructuring of our foreign policy in a smarter, more informed manner. Instead, we seemed doomed to, like the British and Soviets before us, having the dismantling of empire with all its attendant strife forced upon us as a result of our own imperial overreach.