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It's the title of Chalmers Johnson’s
new book, a sadly necessary sequel to his prescient 2000 book,
BLOWBACK which predicted that U.S. foreign policies were creating
resentment abroad that could result in retaliatory attacks. Johnson
was in Los Angeles recently and gave a talk at a local bookstore.
Blowback, Johnson explained, is a CIA term coined to describe the
reaction to foreign operations the government keeps secret from
its citizens. For example, the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini was blowback
to the CIA’s covert actions in 1953 overthrowing Iranian
Prime Minister Mohammed Mosadegh.
“
On the morning of 9/11,” Johnson said, “when my publisher
called to tell me blowback had just hit, I didn’t think about
Muslims, but, instead, I thought of September 11, 1972, when the
government of Salvador Allende was overturned in Chile. Later,
I saw photos of women in Manhattan holding photos of their loved
ones, and I thought of the women in Santiago and Buenos Aires holding
photos of their disappeared ones.”
In the aftermath of 9/11—as Americans asked, “Why do
they hate us?”—George W. Bush had to look no further
than to the people in his entourage who clandestinely trained and
supplied arms to the mujahideen in Afghanistan, Johnson stated.
After the Soviets were defeated, he noted, the Americans walked
away, leaving the nation in shambles.
“
Osama bin Laden wasn’t a Muslim fanatic,” Johnson said. “He
would be skiing on the slopes of Gstaad, or sailing in the Greek
Islands today if we hadn’t betrayed him in Kabul.”
After BLOWBACK became a bestseller and was reprinted 13 times in
the post-9/11 era, Johnson wrote THE SORROWS OF EMPIRE, which predicts
the downfall of the U.S. military-industrial complex as it overextends
itself globally.
“
I’m 72 years old,” he told his audience, “but,
given the pace of events, I think there’s a good chance I’ll
live to see the end of the American empire.”
Noting that the U.S. maintains 725 military bases worldwide—not
including espionage bases, Air Force bases or 14 permanent bases
under construction in Iraq—Johnson said this could bankrupt
the nation.
“
Americans may still prefer to use euphemisms such as ‘sole
superpower,’” he remarked, “but since 9/11, our
country has undergone a transformation from republic to empire
that may well prove irreversible.”
Drawing upon his own experience, Johnson, a specialist in Japan-U.S.
relations, said he was invited to Okinawa in 1996. The former Japanese
colony is an island smaller than Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands
with a population of 1.3 million, he noted, but 38 U.S. military
bases are maintained there. The best real estate is given over
to recreation facilities for Americans which exclude locals. Troops
rape an average of two Okinawan women per month—an outrage
that fuels native objections to the U.S. presence.
Okinawa is just one example of U.S. intrusion upon foreign populations,
Johnson pointed out. If, however, Turkey (for instance) had a military
base in Southern California, American fathers would be encouraging
their sons to attack the Turkish occupiers at any time. Because
Americans never have had to put up with foreign troops, he noted,
they have no idea of the resentment our military bases create all
over the world. There are 101 U.S. bases in South Korea, he said,
and others in Germany, Italy, England, and the island of Diego
Garcia, from which all the strategic bombers left for Iraq.
“
Life in the military today is not the same as most veterans knew
it,” Johnson continued. “Kitchen duties, laundry, clean-up
are farmed out today to Kellogg, Brown and Root (a subsidiary of
Halliburton, the company Vice President Richard Cheney was CEO
of before becoming vice president).” A state of perpetual
war is a prerequisite of the military state, Johnson averred, and
this is what Cheney foresees in his call for a regime change in
50 countries.
The retired professor recalled the words of Founding Father James
Madison, who warned against entrusting the right to go to war with
just one man. “Yet,” he exclaimed, “the Congress
gave this right to Bush in August 2002!”
According to Johnson, “The fact that Bush has imperiled Articles
4 and 6 of the Bill of Rights—habeas corpus and illegal searches
of property and person—should be enough to start impeachment
proceedings. If he declares you a Bad Guy, he can put you in prison
indefinitely.
“
In the neocon world view,” he asserted, “America was
to be the new Rome, led by the boy emperor from Crawford.
“
In September 1999,” Johnson continued, “Bush II accepted
the neocon flag as demonstrators protested the International Monetary
Fund and the World Trade Organization in Seattle. The elder Bush
had Brent Scowcroft as an adviser and was wise enough to seek a
second opinion before accepting neocon advice.”
In Johnson’s opinion, the same forces that brought down the
USSR. are working on the U.S. today. “The decline of the
military empire began May 1, 2003,” he said, “when
the president pretended to fly a plane onto the aircraft carrier
Abraham Lincoln replete with a banner reading ‘Mission Accomplished.’ Well,” he
noted, “the Iraqis are no longer stooges of the Saddam regime—and
they want the Americans out.”
Rather than comparing Iraq to Vietnam, Johnson would compare it
to Algeria. The American attack on Fallujah, he said, is akin to
the reprisals the Nazis made on occupied civilian populations. “The
Iraqis who perpetrated those atrocities on the four American mercenaries
were out of Fallujah within the hour,” he pointed out. “And
so to bombard the entire city is like the Gestapo rounding up every
third person and executing them.”
Johnson believes bankruptcy is what will bring an end to the Pax
Americana. “The military is expensive,” he explained, “but
we aren’t paying for it. Instead, we are borrowing to finance
it. And if those creditors in Asia find the Euro, for instance,
more lucrative than the dollar and tell us to pay up, it’s
all over.”
Though he is not optimistic, Johnson’s advice to the peace
movement is to encourage like-minded foreigners to demand that
U.S. bases be closed in their respective countries.
Richard Modiano
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