IMPERIAL ENTROPY AND CORPORATE RULE

How can successive wars to be lost, and wars continued to be made? The holy warriors of the Jihad were a god send to the calculators in Washington, although it now seems the train pushing this load has now run out of steam.

The leaving but staying jig was tripped up in Iraq, but just perhaps it will work in Afghanistan. It probably depends on who gets to play the tune. The criminality of these interventions does not bear witness.

So the recent Quran burning and the unclear facts surrounding the Panjwai massacre slip from headline awareness as the news cycle moves to other matters. Still public opinion is formed in the teeth of propaganda, and insightfully perhaps sees the endeavour as contrary to the common good. But public opinion does not  matter.

So, what gives? Paul Craig Roberts, at CounterPunch suggests:

The answer is that Washington’s empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power. The US Constitution has been extracted in the interests of the Security State, and Americans’ incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1 percent. That is how the American Empire functions.

The New Empire is different. It happens without achieving conquest. The American military did not conquer Iraq and has been forced out politically by the government that Washington established. There is no victory in Afghanistan, and after a decade the American military does not control the country.

In the New Empire success at war no longer matters. The extraction takes place by being at war. Huge sums of American taxpayers’ money have flowed into the American armaments industries and huge amounts of power into Homeland Security. The American empire works by stripping Americans of wealth and liberty.

This analysis is somewhat similar to Ralph Nader‘s passionate oration at the Green Festival in Washington. He gave a shorter interview in 2007:

This was before the Occupy Movement, if it has not been crushed. Ralph Nader is not the only public citizen. Thom Hartmann interviews David Rothkopf:

Part One:

Part Two:

Related articles

• Philip Giradi, Good Night, America, and Goodbye (Antiwar.com):
  

  Meanwhile, in neighboring Pakistan, the parliament is debating ending all cooperation with the United States because of the continuing drone campaign, which, true to pattern, kills mostly civilians. Pakistan is nuclear-armed and actually has real terrorists roaming its tribal regions. The departure of Pakistan from the game enables the manifest waste of the past 11 years to become completely clear, with Washington leaving Central Asia in far worse shape than it was when the U.S. Army and the CIA arrived.

  How can a great nation with vast intelligence and diplomatic resources be so tone deaf and absolutely clueless?

• The Onion, US Military desparate to be handed just one solid war it can knock out of the park.
• William Rivers Pitt at Truthout writes, Let the Million Flowers Bloom – sadly they are wilting.
• He Says One Thing And Does Another – Ralph Nader Responds to Obama’s State of the Union Address (euzicasa.wordpress.com)
• Ralph Nader: Obama is committed to projecting the American empire (dandelionsalad.wordpress.com)
• Ralph Nader “The Patriot Act Is An Abomination!” (newsworldwide.wordpress.com)
• Criminal Empires (lewrockwell.com)
• Ralph Nader “The Patriot Act Is An Abomination!” (filipinofestival.wordpress.com)