The Sorrows of Empire : Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic [The American Empire Project ]

Rating:
Summary: The sky is falling!
Review: Johnson is a reformed CIA advisor from Berkeley (of all places) who went off the government dole and saw the light. He has the vapors about EVERYTHING in modern America, including US military bases, multinational corporations, the balance of trade, the IMF, the World Bank, the military industrial complex and racism. He sadly omits sexism, the American education guild and short skirts -- I would have really enjoyed his pontification of those subjects.

Still ... the book is fun to read, if only for the power that an educated alarmist has over the human heart rate. If the Illuminati and Freemasons are absent from Johnson's tale, the current Bush administration and multinational corporations/bankers/generals/admirals/assorted Others fill the bill.

You won't trust T-bills after reading this. The only thing left is French Francs. Oh wait, Euros. Or maybe sesterces... Johnson invokes the Roman Empire ad nauseum, and after a while it starts to seem like the only safe place to invest.

Rating:
Summary: SCARY
Review: Mr. johnson points out in the beginning of the book that he does not have an optimistic view of our democracy and after reading only about 50 pages I'm scared. I've read or have on my desk most of the current crop of books about this illegal administration and this is the most unsettling of the lot so far. People don't hate us because we're free. They hate us because our government has acted like bullies for a very long time. We get upset because 3000 of our citizens were murdered by zealots but are completely unaware of the millions of people world wide who have been murdered and tortured in our name for the profit of our american corporations. Johnson points out that war has been an abstract concept to most americans until now. We'd better get our act together before some nut sets off a "nuculer" bomb in one of our cities.
Turn off the damn box and crack open a book and learn more about your world. Our lives depend on it!
epistemology: the study of how we know what we know.

Rating:
Summary: One of the most frightening books I have ever read!
Review: There are already many fine, detailed reviews about this eloquently constructed and meticulously documented work, so I will keep mine short.

Obviously, "A reader" from West Liberty, Kentucky was not a reader -of this book, because it would be impossible to claim, "We have no colonies, we aren't anywhere where people don't want us, etc. etc.", once you see the proof presented in here.
If "A reader" had actually read so much as the description of The Sorrows Of Empire, they would have realized that this is an empire of military bases, not of colonies. It is sad, because those comments reflect the fact that there is at least one person who has bought the fairy tale completely.

If you've recently awakened from a period of political slumber (as I have), and feel the need to catch up on what's happened behind the media's Dog-and-Pony show since Viet Nam, I can't recommend a better place to start.
Chalmers Johnson has managed to pack so much history into a few pages that there were times I had to stop reading in order to absorb it.

What really scared me, while watching the September 11 Commission testimony, was the realization that the administration talking heads already know what you will soon learn, which means they are sitting there deliberately lying to us and they know full well that they are doing it.

The Sorrows Of Empire is not a fun read, but tremendously worthwhile. For me it went a long way in answering the questions, "Why do so many countries hate us? Where did our friends go?"

Rating:
Summary: Empire? Utter, nonsensical, braindead, illliterate HOGWASH!
Review: How can the US be an empire when we fail to meet ANY REASONABLE STANDARD of what could be considered an empire?

We have no colonies, we aren't anywhere where people don't want us, we never conquer, but only liberate. We spread our beliefs, yes, but that is a belief in self-determination and THAT is why we're hated. Being the most free country in the world is a burden.

Rating:
Summary: The Sorrows of Empire : Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of
Review: A regular contributor to the Nation, Johnson extends the antimilitarist thesis that he put forth in Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire to current issues of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other areas in the Gulf region. Likening the United States to imperial Rome and calling contemporary America "a military juggernaut intent on world domination," Johnson recounts episodes of what he labels "imperialism" in U.S. history and emphasizes the dangers of a military bureaucracy that he thinks increasingly influences the formation of U.S. foreign policy and the running of our government. His criticism ranges far, attacking racism and sexism in the military, secrecy in defense department and intelligence bureaucracy, the unauthorized use of mercenaries, and the support of "globalization" as a tool of "economic imperialism." Although Johnson's provocative analysis reveals disturbing government action, especially in the use of the U.S. justice system, the recurring analogy he makes of America to the Roman Empire is specious and largely undocumented, and his criticism of U.S. world hegemony in the post-Cold War period does not adequately discuss foreign policy alternatives for dealing with world terrorism and genocidal wars. This clearly written, controversial critique of American foreign policy and the military is suitable for most academic and larger public libraries

Rating:
Summary: Warns of the arrogance that destroys Empires
Review: Sorrows of Empire depicts the rise (and warns of the potential fall) of the "lone superpower", the United States, to world hegemony in the 21st century. Historian Lord Acton warned that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" and that is the central theme of his book. He understands the historical roots of other Empires, especially the Roman and British Empire, and draws parallels,such as the way in which the Roman Republic became transformed into the Roman Empire, with it losing freedoms and depending on naked force, a process he sees happening now in the US Empire.He depicts the link between militarism and empire warning, as Eisenhower did, of the military-industrial complex, which have built up the corporate sector but ignored the needs of ordinary voters. Historical factors that have led to the collapse of empires include financial problems,especially those of imperial overstretch; the competition for resources that can lead to conquest,as in Afghanistan and Iraq; the destruction of civil liberties; and a self-righteousness that depicts all evil as belonging to the enemy and not to ourselves. The immoral and illegal actions of such secret agencies as the CIA can also bring unexpected retaliation, as he shows in another book, Blowback. Altogether, this makes uncomfortable but very instructive reading.

Rating:
Summary: Effectively damning, but depressing and too often redundant
Review: This is the second installment in Chalmers Johnson's increasingly comprehensive indictment of U.S. foreign policy. The first was "Blowback", published in 2000, which detailed his prescient warnings of dire, unintended consequences of the aggressiveness of certain of those policies, focusing primarily on those affecting East Asia. Now that such warnings have been tragically realized, Chalmers has extended his analysis to the whole of U.S. policy. His subtitle, which concludes with "... and the End of the Republic", indicates that he believes the country may be too far gone to rescue.

After reading his bill of particulars, it's hard not to conclude that the only aspect of democratic life that continues to distinguish America is the freedom to publish books like this. In particular, Johnson believes that militarism - which he defines as the armed services putting their own preservation and expansion above all other concerns - has already corrupted American institutions beyond any reasonable hope of salvage.

Chalmers is a former consultant to the CIA. It isn't often that a critic - or even a potential critic - has had as much access to the kind of inside detailed information as did the author. (Although Daniel Ellsberg comes to mind.) He marshals that information to make a convincing case that interlocked military-related institutions have been given free rein by U.S. policy makers. "Foreign policy" has been replaced, he says, by military empire. Evidence is piled upon evidence.

All institutions, whether public or private, dedicate a large amount of their energy and resources towards extending their life and their reach. It is precisely this dynamic that we expect the Constitution and our lawmakers to properly constrain. Current events and the detail amassed by Chalmers show that our civilian leaders have largely abandoned such effort or have themselves become implicated in allowing the military to dominate far beyond what the famous valedictory warnings of Presidents Washington and Eisenhower envisioned.

Although Chalmers' evidence is convincing, he makes an unnecessary practice of visiting the same particulars repeatedly. For example, he sees as emblematic the creature-comforts and isolation from the surrounding cultures of our military bases, viewing them as deluding combinations of Club Med and Disneyland. While he provides plenty of substantiation, by repetition he elevates this charge to an importance equal to that of more serious accusations, such as the military's subversion of justice in the countries that "host" such bases.

I have a more fundamental difficulty with the book. What purpose does it serve? Only the most idealistic among us could be stirred to action by such a disheartening chronicle. The author's proposals for halting militarism and its consequences are perfunctory, vague, and melancholy. If Chalmers is right about the situation, the book will most likely serve best as documentary history to future generations, should there be any.

Rating:
Summary: Expansive
Review: There are a number of political books vying for reader attention this election year. Johnson's, however, is especially noteworthy, because it includes a trend largely unnoticed by other high-profile critics: viz. the growing role of the military in setting foreign and domestic policy. From a professionalized armed services, to a constituency of 700+ global bases, to the powers of regional Commanders in Chief, to attacks on the Posse Comitatus Act, the Pentagon's role in post-9/11 government is, to put it simply, expanding rapidly. Thus a trend is being established that should alarm conservative and liberal alike. As Johnson sees it, the needs of a burgeoning empire are beginning to overwhelm the civilian foundations of American government, which, as we are instucted in school, remains the traditional cornerstone of the republic. And while I agree that militarism is a prerequiste of global imperialism, still and all, I wish Johnson had not tried to do so much in a scant 300 pages. That is simply not sufficient room for tying together the work's many major topics, which include the military-industrial complex, imperial expansion, economic globalization, plus a last chapter rumination on the sorrows of empire. As a result, the impact tends to scatter and dissipate more than it should, lending some credibility to critics' charges of inadequate support. Nonetheless, Johnson has his finger on a major development that deserves serious attention from researcher and citizen alike. Despite shortcomings, The Sorrows of Empire is a good place to start.

Rating:
Summary: Recommended by Janeane Garafalo!!
Review: The back cover of this book has a blurb by one of our great political theorists and commentators on current events, Janeane Garafalo!! Don't waste your time. Johnson see conspiracy and greed behind ever every action in US foreign policy.

Rating:
Summary: Pure Partisan Tendentiousness.
Review: Each point brought by Johnson has a simple explanation. Johnson prefers the complex conspiracy theory in every case. This is a book that will wind up on the conspiracy shelf with John Birch classics like Benson's 'None Dare Call It Treason' and Skousen's 'The Naked Communist.'

If you want an easy guage of someone's political leanings, just watch his willingness to believe the complex, unlikely story over the more simple explanation. Witness the backflips people used to do over Gingrich's book deal, and the same people's ho-hum acceptance of Sen. Clinton's mammoth book deal. The same explanation applied to both--either there was 'an appearance of corruption' or there was not. But one's willingness to see it on one side or the other was purely a function of his politics.

Just so with this book. If you are a Republican, you probably agree with me. If you are a Democrat, you probably would apply this review to books by Frum, Podhoretz or de Souza.

Same old partisan story, chapter 10,xxx,xxx.