Each act of the empire provokes a response that serves as a pretext for further imperial action. The battlefield is the world, and the “war on terror” can go on forever. Except for the dead, the maimed, the malnourished, and the taxpayers, it’s a sweet deal all around.The rest of my latest op-ed, "Terrorist Threat Has Roots in U.S. Policy," is here.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Op-ed Terrorist Threat Has Roots in U.S. Policy
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Beautiful! It seems to be the common principle of all government action: all wars and "moral equivalents of war" create justifications for further expanding the war. Criminalization of drugs creates powerful, violent drug cartels, which are used to justify expanding the police state. Most people think of "drug-related violence" or "drug crime" as one of the major justifications for the drug war, but almost all such associated violence is the direct result of high black market prices stemming directly from the state's own policy.
There may be a C4SS column here.
Re Empire generating violent responses that are used to justify further imperial expansion, that reminds me of Livy's account of the growth of Roman power in Italy. Every time Rome set itself up as the dominant power in a larger block of territory--for its security--it found a new foreign threat to that block of territory, which caused it to defeat that enemy and consolidate its control over a larger buffer area. Rome dealt with the vulnerability of its frontiers by acquiring new frontiers, which in turn became vulnerable.
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