It's Time to Finally Admit We're an Empire.

[dipsydoodle]

Is America an empire or not? It is a loaded question because in the modern age, that word -- empire -- is not a moniker citizens proudly embrace in the way we might imagine the Ottomans or the Romans did during their reigns. Instead, the word today evokes images of the Death Star. And so we shirk the term's implications and insinuations, much as President Obama did this week at the United Nations.

"The United States has a hard-earned humility when it comes to our ability to determine events inside other countries," he declared in his speech to the General Assembly. "The notion of American empire may be useful propaganda, but it isn't borne out by America's current policy."

The rhetoric sounds nice and it deftly portrays the United States as the sympathetic victim of an international conspiracy. The problem is that it glosses over how current U.S. policies do, in fact, create an imperial footprint.

This is most easy to see when it comes to our military. According to a 2010 report by the Pentagon, the United States has 662 overseas bases in 38 different countries. Additionally, the United States recently invaded and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan and helped invade Libya. It is also prosecuting undeclared wars in Yemen and Pakistan, while propping up dictators in most of the Middle East. Oh, and we are also the world's biggest exporter of weapons and spend more on our military than most of the world combined.

http://www.alternet.org/world/its-time-finally-admit-were-empire

[Uncle Joe]

1. The U.S. government may see itself as running an empire, but the people should never admit it,

for in doing so, they De Facto accept failure of our democratic republic

The inability to acknowledge this changing reality, in fact, is the ultimate sign that for all the rhetoric to the contrary, the United States government does see itself as running an empire. Such intransigence and hubris, after all, have defined the decline of empires into the very chaos they so fear. Perhaps the only way to halt such a decline is to finally admit we are an empire -- and then take the necessary steps to start shedding that label for good.

Once the people embrace "empire" as a given, the next progression is in searching for an emperor, king, queen or "strongman" to hold the empire together or expand it even more.

Knowing that we are in fact a first, last and foremost a democratic republic is the only bulwark against psychologically sliding down that slippery slope.

Thanks for the thread, dipsydoodle

[struggle4progress]

2. IMO the question "Is America an empire or not?" is of no importance whatsoever:

to answer the question provides no usable insights into current economic and political structures, and hence any time spent trying to answer the question is simply wasted -- one could have instead spent that time actually learning something concrete and practical

[libdem4life]

3. US Military Interventions since 1890...post Civil War. Three-figure number.

http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

One can draw their own opinion.