Fessing Up to Our Imperial Footprint

[unhappycamper]

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18220-fessing-up-imperial-footprint



Fessing Up to Our Imperial Footprint
DAVID SIROTA ON BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Friday, 27 September 2013 08:12

~snip~

"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.

On the intelligence side of things, it is a similar story. The National Security Administration is not only collecting domestic communications, it is constructing a global surveillance system. That includes collecting communications data from countries across the world, surveilling heads of state in Brazil and Mexico, hacking computers at the Indian embassy, spying on the United Nations and wiretapping Brazil's state-owned oil company. And that's just what we know about.

[Scuba]

1. Funny, I don't feel safer. Strengthening Social Security would make me feel safer.