The Best of Tomdispatch: Chalmers Johnson
This is number 2. For an explanation please go to the next"Tomgram". The one with Sunsan Sontag....................PEACE.....................Scott
In September 2003, only four months after our President's "Mission Accomplished" moment on the USS Abraham Lincoln, it was already evident to some of us that neocon dreams of establishing a robust Pax Americana on the planet were likely to be doomed in the sands of Iraq -- but that, in the process, the American constitutional system as we've known it might well be destroyed. The question of just what Rubicon we might have crossed when American troops first took a bridge over the Euphrates was on my mind -- and Chalmers Johnson's as well. He sat down early that September, having just seen a production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and wrote out his own version of the fall of the republic, which he entitled "The Scourge of Militarism," an essay as resonant today as it was then. It is the second offering in my Best of Tomdispatch 2003 series.
Looking back almost two years later, Johnson writes,
"The American governmental system is no longer working the way it is supposed to. Many distinguished observers think it is badly damaged in terms of Constitutional checks and balances and the structures put in place by the founders to prevent tyranny. General Tommy Franks, commander of the American assault on Baghdad, predicts that another terrorist attack on the United States would 'begin to unravel the fabric of our Constitution,' and he openly suggests that 'the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.'
"Another military writer, the historian Kevin Baker, fears that we are not far from the day when, like the Roman Senate in 27 B.C., our Congress will take its last meaningful vote and turn over power to a military dictator. 'In the end, we'll beg for the coup,' he writes. At the same time the American public seems apathetic. Most Americans sense that the country is in great trouble, but evidently don't know how to think about the crisis we find ourselves in. Having been poorly schooled and without an elementary knowledge of earlier republics, the problems of standing armies in any form of democracy, and the threat of militarism (a fear that virtually all Americans shared during our first century as a republic), the American people today stare blankly at the mounting evidence that our military is totally out of control. Back in 2003, my 'Scourge of Militarism' essay tried to lay out some new ways to think about our current dilemmas based on what happened to an earlier republi! c faced with similar conditions. Unfortunately, given what's happened since, there is no reason to be optimistic about this fate of ours."
At the time, I introduced Johnson's essay this way -- and I wouldn't change a word:
We were to be the New Rome. As right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer (emphasis always on the "hammer") wrote in Time magazine near the ides of March, 2001 ("The Bush Doctrine, In American foreign policy, a new motto: Don't ask. Tell"), "America is no mere international citizen. It is the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome. Accordingly, America is in a position to reshape norms, alter expectations, and create new realities. How? By unapologetic and implacable demonstrations of will."
And that was before the terrorists of September 11th flew into the picture. In the wake of our President's declared "war on terrorism" and an instant "triumph" in Afghanistan, as the drums of war began to pound again, from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to those of the Washington Post, the New Rome analogy only grew and prospered. Empire, once a dirty word in the American lexicon, was suddenly a badge of pride, or at least a Kiplingesque "burden" (as the New York Times Magazine had it in a cover story) to be hoisted on our capacious military shoulders. Our world, once we were done pounding it into shape with "implacable demonstrations of will," would put the Pax Romana and Pax Britannia combined into the shade. There would be nothing like it.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
In September 2003, only four months after our President's "Mission Accomplished" moment on the USS Abraham Lincoln, it was already evident to some of us that neocon dreams of establishing a robust Pax Americana on the planet were likely to be doomed in the sands of Iraq -- but that, in the process, the American constitutional system as we've known it might well be destroyed. The question of just what Rubicon we might have crossed when American troops first took a bridge over the Euphrates was on my mind -- and Chalmers Johnson's as well. He sat down early that September, having just seen a production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and wrote out his own version of the fall of the republic, which he entitled "The Scourge of Militarism," an essay as resonant today as it was then. It is the second offering in my Best of Tomdispatch 2003 series.
Looking back almost two years later, Johnson writes,
"The American governmental system is no longer working the way it is supposed to. Many distinguished observers think it is badly damaged in terms of Constitutional checks and balances and the structures put in place by the founders to prevent tyranny. General Tommy Franks, commander of the American assault on Baghdad, predicts that another terrorist attack on the United States would 'begin to unravel the fabric of our Constitution,' and he openly suggests that 'the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.'
"Another military writer, the historian Kevin Baker, fears that we are not far from the day when, like the Roman Senate in 27 B.C., our Congress will take its last meaningful vote and turn over power to a military dictator. 'In the end, we'll beg for the coup,' he writes. At the same time the American public seems apathetic. Most Americans sense that the country is in great trouble, but evidently don't know how to think about the crisis we find ourselves in. Having been poorly schooled and without an elementary knowledge of earlier republics, the problems of standing armies in any form of democracy, and the threat of militarism (a fear that virtually all Americans shared during our first century as a republic), the American people today stare blankly at the mounting evidence that our military is totally out of control. Back in 2003, my 'Scourge of Militarism' essay tried to lay out some new ways to think about our current dilemmas based on what happened to an earlier republi! c faced with similar conditions. Unfortunately, given what's happened since, there is no reason to be optimistic about this fate of ours."
At the time, I introduced Johnson's essay this way -- and I wouldn't change a word:
We were to be the New Rome. As right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer (emphasis always on the "hammer") wrote in Time magazine near the ides of March, 2001 ("The Bush Doctrine, In American foreign policy, a new motto: Don't ask. Tell"), "America is no mere international citizen. It is the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome. Accordingly, America is in a position to reshape norms, alter expectations, and create new realities. How? By unapologetic and implacable demonstrations of will."
And that was before the terrorists of September 11th flew into the picture. In the wake of our President's declared "war on terrorism" and an instant "triumph" in Afghanistan, as the drums of war began to pound again, from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to those of the Washington Post, the New Rome analogy only grew and prospered. Empire, once a dirty word in the American lexicon, was suddenly a badge of pride, or at least a Kiplingesque "burden" (as the New York Times Magazine had it in a cover story) to be hoisted on our capacious military shoulders. Our world, once we were done pounding it into shape with "implacable demonstrations of will," would put the Pax Romana and Pax Britannia combined into the shade. There would be nothing like it.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
posted by T. Scott Brineman at 4:40 AM
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