While other people wait in a line for the latest smart phone, video game, or some other material possession, I have been anxiously waiting for a new book to arrive in the mail.
The book, Dismantling the Empire- America’s Last Best Hope by Chalmers Johnson, is the latest book published by one of the most widely respected and admired anti-imperial scholars. If the book reviews by political scholars, former members of the military, and Pulitzer winning authors are any indication, this latest book appears to be another great addition to the trilogy of books he has already written on the condition of the American Empire.
Taken from the sleeve of the hard cover edition:
In his prophetic book Blowback, published before 9/11, Chalmers Johnson warned that our secret operations around the globe would exact a price at home. Now, in a series of essays, Johnson measures that price, assesses the dangers America faces, and shows just how the United States became a superpower living desperately beyond its means. Our reliance on Pentagon economics, a global empire of bases, and war without end, he declares in nothing short of a “suicide option”.
Dismantling the Empire explores the subjects for which Johnson is now famous, from the origins of blowback to Barack Obama’s Afghanistan conundrum, including our inept spies, our devastatingly bad behavior in other countries, our ill-fought wars, and our capitulation to a military that has taken ever more control of the federal budget. There is, he proposes, only one way out: President Obama must begin to dismantle the empire before it dismantles the American dream. If we do not learn from the fates of past empires, he suggests our decline and fall are foreordained. This is Johnson and his best: delivering both a warning and an urgent prescription for a remedy.
1 comments:
It is now past two years into President Obama's Administration first term [February 10, 2011]. The President's political party has lost control of the House of Representatives and is on verge of turning control of the Senate to the opposition. It may be due to these conditions that President Obama no longer has the "Good Will" from the American people as earnt "political capital" to begin the process of dismantling the United States military empire. It is unfortunate for America that Chalmers Johnson is dead. The question will be who shall replace Professor Chalmers Johnson on the Front lines of American intellectual dissent?
Michael Fay,
College Station,
Texas
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