The American Empire

In “The City of God,” Saint Augustine recounted “The answer which a captured pirate gave to the celebrated Alexander the Great… When that king asked the man what he meant by infesting the sea, he boldly replied: ‘What you mean by warring on the whole world. I do my fighting on a tiny ship, and they call me a pirate; you do yours with a large fleet, and they call you Commander.’”

William Appleman Williams wrote that when we “indignantly deny that the United States is or ever was an empire… that is to deny our own history.” John Winthrop called us, “a City upon a Hill.” In contrast, George Washington said, “This land of freedom” was “our nascent empire.” Our founding fathers imagined an American Empire.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that he was “persuaded no constitution was ever before as well calculated as ours for extending extensive empire and self-government.” Alexander Hamilton said, in the opening paragraph of the Federalist Papers, the U.S. was “in many respects the most interesting… empire… in the world.”

Jefferson wrote, “Our confederacy must be viewed as the nest from which all America, North and South is to be peopled.” George Washington explained how. “When the gradual extension of our Settlements will as certainly cause the Savage as the Wolf to retire; both being beasts of prey tho’ they differ in shape.”

One of Benjamin Franklin’s Observations in 1751 was “Hence the Prince that acquires new Territory, if he finds it vacant, or removes the Natives to give his own People Room… may be properly called Fathers of their Nation.”
Jefferson wrote, The Cherokees, “we shall be obliged to drive them, with the beasts of the forest into the Stony mountains. they will be conquered.” According to Appleman Williams, the American Empire, “destroyed the cultures of the First Americans, conquered half of Mexico, and relentlessly expanded their government’s power around the globe.” Thomas Hutchins wrote, “Lords of America… possess, in the utmost security, the dominion of sea throughout the world.”

Jefferson provided the rationale for the empire. “We believe no more in Bonaparte’s fighting merely for the liberty of the seas, than in Great Britain’s fighting for the liberties of mankind. the object of both is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the wealth and the resources of other nations.”
General John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, said, “Of course it’s about oil; we can’t really deny that.”
Alan Greenspan wrote, “It is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

As of July 2021, the U.S. has 750 foreign military bases in at least 80 countries.

Anatol Lieven wrote in 2003, “The ultimate goal here would be world hegemony by means of absolute military superiority.”

In 2004, Lieven wrote that the US empire “Dominates the world not only militarily… culturally and economically.” But, “for the mass of the American people,” this was “‘an empire in denial.'”

Anton Porcari

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