By Stephen Lendman Information Clearing House

The US-led aggression in the Middle East and the three failed attempts to oust Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez since 2002 (with a fourth now planned and likely to be implemented soon) are just the latest examples of this country’s imperial agenda and the “new world order” it has in mind. The way this country now engages throughout the world isn’t much different than what it’s done close to home and worldwide since inception. Only the venues chosen, the scope of our aims, and the extent of our power have changed. This article in two parts gives some historical perspective and then concentrates on the imperial grand strategy of the Bush administration under which regime change is a central element.

In Part II, the focus is on the war in Iraq as a case study of imperial madness and its consequences. It also covers a possible little discussed economic motive behind what’s now being called “the long war.”

Maybe it’s something in the air or water around the Capitol that makes it happen – causing the men and women elected or appointed to high office to do bad things. It may in part be going along to get along for some of them. But mostly it’s the dangerous and deadly sickness or syndrome of power corrupting and absolute power doing it absolutely. That’s bad enough, but when it happens to rulers of a superpower and those in league with them, it can inflict immeasurable harm and human suffering. In cost/benefit analysis terms: what serves the interests of a superstate comes at the expense of the public welfare.

The US Has Always Been A Warrior, Imperial Nation

There’s no longer a dispute that the US pursues an imperial agenda. What once was hidden behind a politically correct facade and would never be admitted publicly is now seen as something respectable and even an obligation to advance “western civilization.” How low we’ve sunk in coming so far. But how different is today from the past? Not much for those who know the country’s true history that’s quite different from the proper and polite version of it taught in school at all levels. Expansionism and militarism have always been in our DNA since the early settlers first confronted the nation’s original inhabitants and then over the next few hundred years slaughtered about 18 million of them to seize their land and resources. We may even have put language in our sacred Declaration of Independence to give us a birthright to do it. In it we called our native people “merciless indian savages,” and with that kind of framing gave ourselves a moral justification to remove them. It’s a code based on the notion of might makes right and what we say goes. It didn’t matter that our original inhabitants lived mostly in peace for 20-30,000 years on the lands we took from them. There also was no concern that the native peoples treated the early settlers graciously, helping them survive through the early years of struggle and hard adjustment. We showed our gratitude with hostility, open warfare and genocidal extermination. It never ended and continues in less conspicuous ways today as the current unstated national policy is to eliminate native cultures through assimilation into our own. It’s hardly a testimony to the benefits of “western civilization” Gandhi thought would be a good idea when asked what he thought of it.

Full Article: Information Clearing House.

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