WORM'S EYE

By Ross Tipon, Baguio City, Philippines

I use the term Empire in the Gore Vidal sense, not in the usual leftist sense. True indeed that America had its backwater empire in Latin America installing the Batistas, Trujillos, Somozas and other military thugs for the benefit largely of Big Banana and Big Pineapple. The coup in Chile was instigated by Citibank and engineered by consiglieri Kissinger. These Ilyrian Provinces are just a sideshow to empire transformation in Beltway.

Gore Vidal spoke of the Imperial Presidency. Just as in Rome the Senate had been emasculated so in Washington power has passed unchecked to an Imperial Presidency.

Whatever Bush wants these days Bush gets all in the name of national security. Of course, it did not start with Bush. Lyndon Johnson got his Gulf of Tonkin Resolution with nary an opposition, which was the instrument with which he could wage war sans formal declaration as required by the Constitution. The factual basis for the Resolution was a couple of beeps (later on acknowledged as unverified) registered on the radar screen of a patrolling destroyer. Nixon expanded his mandate without informing anyone when he ordered the bombing of Cambodia.

It was not always like that. Woodrow Wilson was stymied by an isolationist Republican Senate. Franklin Roosevelt was not sure if he could make Congress declare was on Nazi Germany even after Pearl Harbor. Hitler solved the problem for him. He declared war on the United States. There were again grumbling from Republican ideologues about the wisdom of creating the United Nations.

With the Republic's institutions emasculated, the Empire is ruled by unelected corporations answerable only to themselves. The fate of the Health Care Bill demonstrates the power of the pharmaceutical corporations to dictate legislation. So too goes for the fate of the gun control bill.

But today the transformation from Republic to Empire has even reached the military establishment. America has now a mercenary army, just as in the latter period of the Roman Empire. It is called a volunteer army but that is what it is, a mercenary army. The far-flung British Empire was held together by a mercenary army, as George Orwell astutely observed, an army unprepared for the Great War, hence the disasters are Somme and Ypres. It was an army, Orwell went on to say, good only for fighting savages at the rim.

Rome's mercenary army was recruited from the Latinized barbarians at the rim eager to acquire Roman citizenship. Needless to say it was these nouveau citizens who swelled the Praetorian ranks, who later on became players in the installation of a new emperor. American volunteer army gets recruits like Jessica Lynch who couldn't get a job at Walmart. They even got worse types as the Iraq prison scandal has now amply demonstrated.

The new American recruits were showing off the good food they ate before TV cameras. Catering under the new Republican dispensation had been privatized and awarded to--you can readily guess--Halliburton. Yes, there are no more KPs, only regular God-fearing fellows and gals.

So the next logical step is to privatize military prisons and intelligence-gathering. No use having a CIA, which is not in speaking terms with the FBI. Hell, privatize the whole shebang and solve the problem. And no more need for cumbersome chain of command, paper trails and press leakages.

Comments from Felipoy:

"With the Republic's institutions emasculated, theEmpire is ruled by unelected corporations answerableonly to themselves."

Your sentence captures the essence of the Americansystem. This explains it all. You can go back to theFounding Fathers, before corporations were invented, and you will see that the debate among the wealthyslave owning Founders was how to keep a balance andseparation of powers effectively emasculating anyinstitution from becoming omnipotent.

In the modern age, corporations are furtheremasculating institutions and regulations that werecreated in response to civil unrest during theirperiodic economic downturns. Thus the drive forderegulation and privatization. Eventually antimonopoly laws i.e. the Sherman Act will be completelyemasculated-look at what's happening with mediaconsolidation. When that happens, the old big fishwill swallow everything and civil unrest will followand then the pendulum will swing again. Someday,hopefully, America will find equilibrium. When thattime comes, they will be foolish not to export theirAmerican Way. In the meantime, they should get theirhouse in order before they venture out.