The United States had been blaming social and political upheaval on the Soviet Union for the previous forty-six years ... The bloated military budget vs. peace dividend. ibid.
Anger was unleashed on the world – an enormous Pandora’s box of dark energy and pent up fear and chaos. ibid.
‘The tragedy was that if we had the courage to be vulnerable, if we had built on empathy we would be far safer and more secure today than we are.’ ibid. Chris Hedges
9/11: A chance to implement the agenda that their Neo-Conservative allies had been working on for decades. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States X: Bush and Obama: Age of Terror
The United States was embarking on a global war. ibid.
The Bush administration branded detainees as ‘unlawful enemy combatants’. ibid.
Afghanistan was a distraction to Bush; his attention was focused on toppling his father’s old adversary Saddam Hussein. ibid.
The US would act unilaterally and pre-emptively to overthrow any government deemed a threat to US security. ibid.
Millions of protesters hit the streets around the world. ibid.
The New York Times Sunday magazine cover for January 5 2003: The American Empire (Get Used to It). ibid.
The eight-year war became the debacle critics predicted. ibid.
He [Obama] repeatedly invoked the state’s secrets privilege in lawsuits involving torture, extraordinary rendition and illegal NSA evesdropping. ibid.
Obama surrounded himself with hawkish advisers. ibid.
Commerce, Oil, Money and Power are the only values that come from Washington’s lead, consistently over the years the world has learned to hate all American intervention because it is known full well that at the bottom of every American foreign policy these four corrupting principles are immovably roosted. Even in matters of foreign aid, the USA is abusive and two-faced. The poor USA citizens do not know the extent of the damage that their country’s commercialism-at-all-costs is costing the world. World peace, world economy, third world countries, the environment and international co-operation are all victims of the USA’s blatant greed. Vexen Crabtree, USA: Contempt for United Nations and International Folly, 2003
People don’t sacrifice themselves for no reason. Let’s find out what it is. And if we did something wrong (no doubt we did) let’s apologize, ask for forgiveness, and then ask how we can do better. Jeff Kandt, 2001
Are you an American? Are you paying attention to what your government is doing overseas? All over the world, and in the Middle East in particular, the US government is pursuing a foreign policy that many people consider immoral. We have supported, trained and armed dictators, illegitimate governments and racist and brutal regimes. We have largely ignored the pain and suffering this has caused. Jeff Kandt, 2001
Three years ago, in response to embassy bombings, America attacked a pharmaceutical factory in one of the poorest countries in the world. The Clinton administration said that the Sudanese factory was linked to Osama bin Laden and involved in the production of chemical weapons.
In the following months, that justification fell apart. Although it was not widely reported, it appears that our leaders reacted too hastily, with tragic results. While there were few injuries from the bombing itself, the people of Sudan have suffered enormously as a result of losing this crucial source of medicine.
Please, let’s not let that happen again. Jeff Kandt
American corporations and popular culture affect the lives and infect the indigenous cultures of millions around the world. The foreign policy of the US government, backed by its military strength, has unprecedented global influence now that the USA is the world’s only superpower – its first ‘hyper power’. America also exports its value systems, defining what it means to be civilised, rational, developed and democratic – indeed, what it is to be human. Meanwhile, the US itself is impervious to outside influence, and if most Americans think of the rest of the world at all, it is in terms of deeply ingrained cultural stereotypes. Ziauddin Sardar & Merryl Wyn Davies, Why Do People Hate America?
Unconstrained by any superpower rival or system of global governance, the US giant has rewritten the global financial and trading system in its own interest; ripped up a string of treaties it finds inconvenient; sent troops to every corner of the globe; bombed Afghanistan, Sudan, Yugoslavia and Iraq without troubling the United Nations; maintained a string of murderous embargoes against recalcitrant regimes; and recklessly thrown its weight behind Israel’s 34-year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the Palestinian Intifada rages. The Guardian article Seumas Milne 13 September 2001, ‘They Can’t See Why They Are Hated’
George Bush’s administration yesterday blasted another lethal hole in the vital structure of multilateral arms agreements that has so far protected most of the world from the worst dangers of the modern military age. America’s lone, wanton wrecking of long-running negotiations to enforce the 1972 treaty banning biological or germ weapons is an insult to the pact’s 142 other signatories, a body-blow for the treaty itself and a major setback for international efforts to agree practical curbs on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
By this action, the US suggests that its national security interests, narrowly defined, and the commercial interests of its dominant biotechnology sector should take precedence over responsible global collaboration to meet a common threat. By rejecting the proposed inspection regime, it further, dangerously, suggests to others that the US is not really worried about germ-warfare controls and wants to develop its own, advanced biological weapons.
This in turn could have a serious impact on continuing efforts to bolster the equally important chemical weapons convention. Since Tony Blair’s government has been particularly active in promoting the BWC enforcement protocol, it may now be expected to be particularly active in condemning this latest piece of Bush vandalism. Jack Straw should summon the US ambassador, a Bush appointee, to the Foreign Office and demand an explanation.
The US move confirms a pattern of reckless, unilateralist behaviour on arms control, as on environmental and other issues. Since taking office, Mr Bush has spoken in grandiose terms of the need for ‘new thinking’ and for a ‘new strategic framework’. But to date, this supposed post-cold war global security vision has largely amounted to trashing existing agreements without any clear idea of what to put in their place. The Guardian article 26 July 2001, Proliferator-in-chief
Senate Bill 28:34 authorises the following: gives the President power to initiate covert actions – this has never before been given to the President; prevents Congress from stopping the President’s initiation of covert actions; allows the President to use any federal departments, agencies or entities to operate or finance any covert action ... Bill Cooper, Behold a Pale Horse
Long a cherished American tradition that the United States is not and cannot be an Empire. The words American Empire were fighting words so that uttering them was almost a sure sign that one was a left-wing critic of American foreign policy. Andrew Bacevich, American Empire
Strategic Assessment 1999: Priorities for a Turbulent World: US policy document reveals willingness of US military to wage international war for oil. Empire of Oil: The Hidden History of 9/11
People are coming out of the closet on the word Empire. Charles Krauthammer
America is no mere international citizen, but the dominant power in the world. More dominant than any since Rome. Charles Krauthammer
The Bush Administration’s global domination project ... poses the threat of global fascism. Richard A Falk
It was exactly this same blind focus in the news factory which left the American people after the attacks of September 2001 asking in genuine ignorance: ‘Why do they hate us?’ In the same way it has left them for decades in overwhelming ignorance of the behaviour of US security and intelligence agencies which has created such hostility to their country. Nick Davies, Flat Earth News 2008
What you see is American military hegemony covering 90% of the globe’s energy resources. Lt Col Karen Kwaitkowski
No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation. Woodrow Wilson, speech 20th April 1915
This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that. John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Reagan ... was most definitely a global empire builder, a servant of the corporatocracy ... He would cater to the men who shuttled back and forth from corporate CEO offices to bank boards and into the halls of government. He would serve the men who appeared to serve him but who in fact ran the government – men like Vice President George H W Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Richard Cheney, Richard Helms, and Robert McNamara. He would advocate what those men wanted: an America that controlled the world and all its resources, a world that answered to the commands of that America, a US military that would enforce the rules as they were written by America, and an international trade and banking system that supported America as CEO of the global empire. ibid.