Accepting the End of the US Empire

[laststeamtrain]

consortiumnews.com

Accepting the End of the US Empire

By Ivan Eland
February 3, 2009

When you stop to think about it, people measure how well their lives are going not by their absolute state of being but by their situation relative to their expectations.

For example, a poor person in a developing country may be ecstatic about getting a pair of shoes for the first time; in contrast, a billionaire may commit suicide after he loses $100 million in a down market.

The same is true for nations. The American elite has enjoyed the United States’ dominant status in the world since World War II and became thoroughly drunk with U.S. superiority in the last two decades after the demise of the Soviet Union left the country as the only superpower.

<snip>

Obama has good instincts on withdrawing from Iraq but is slowly being co-opted by the foreign policy elites and military bureaucracy. His instincts on Afghanistan are likely to be “unhelpful.” He wants to double down on a nation-building conflict that is stoking Islamist fundamentalism and will be much harder to “win” than Iraq (although the U.S. hasn’t won Iraq by a long shot).

Obama needs to wise up, totally withdraw from both Iraq and Afghanistan, focus on finding bin Laden in Pakistan, withdraw from the U.S. Empire, and dramatically slash the U.S. defense budget.

<snip>

The U.S. can still be an economic superpower and have much influence in the world, but the days of being a globe-girdling military power are over. The U.S. foreign policy elite just hasn’t accepted it yet.

<more>

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/020309a.html

[izzie]

1. I do think we need to give up our pet wars.

Let work on ed. our pop.....Why are we every place in the world any how? I bet Obama has not cut down on those 900 plus bases around the world. We could start with that. I think we have been less than a super power for a long time but one thing we have done that you can not put back in the bottle is that every one can rule them self. It has gone around the world now and that thought is so Am. How these people do it is up to them and not us. Course as always their will be the people who fell they can rule any one better than they can do it them self. That fight seems to be an endless fight.

[exboyfil]

2. It used to be called "White Man's Burden" in British colonial days

Modern History Sourcebook:
Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden, 1899


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This famous poem, written by Britain's imperial poet, was a response to the American take over of the Phillipines after the Spanish-American War.


Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

Originally written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Obviously we have not learned much in 110 years. Read the poem in light of what happened to the British in Afghanistan, the French and the U.S. in Vietnam, and the U.S. in Iraq/Afghanistan.

Nation building sucks, and I see no reason why we spend over twice the amount of our GDP than the OECD average for defense. Bring our troops home.

[tama]

3. Read the poem

in light of multiple, continuous ethnocides, raping and poisoning Mother Nature, destroying the basis of livelihood of our children - including and especially also the children of "White man" and all the drunken globalized consumers and homogeniced victims of Eurocentric imperialism in all it's forms.

Why is not the burden of White man his own children and their chance to live a full human life, but destroying the future of his children and everybody elses, why is the burden of White man superiority complex over other peoples and Nature herself?

[Judi Lynn]

4. Unbelievable! I have always missed reading this until you posted it. Appalling, hideous.

Cannot believe the degree of contempt he held for "The silent, sullen peoples."

Who the hell WOULDN'T be sullen with pompous, vicious people like the imperialists seizing his/her country and exploiting the people and their natural resources, treating them all like trash. They are goddamned lucky any of them made it home alive to publish their filthy racist crap to share with other delusional anal fools.

I've heard the expression "white man's burden" for ages but never read the poem. Thank you so much. It's a stinker, isn't it? Sheesh. He was probably damned proud of himself when he finished it.

http://www.mackinac.org.nyud.net:8090/media/images/2002/v2002-17a.jpg

Kipling, hard at work producing more of his dandy "deep thoughts."

[izzie]

5. I am with you on this. Lets come home.

I feel sorry for the women in the middle East and I am willing to bet so did my great grand mother who was born in 1851. The Middle East will have to fix it and not me or you. Always seem to be people around that think they can live your life better than you can live it.