Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic

(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004). 312 pp. + Notes and Index   [10-18-04]

Surely it is vital to know the facts, as well as to have convictions. Chalmers Johnson provides both. Outside the United States, there are 725 military bases in thirty-eight countries, not counting the ones in Bosnia, Iraq, Israel, nor the secret ones not listed in the Pentagon's latest Manpower Report. "The 725 foreign bases, including the installations listed as 'other,' have a replacement value, according to the Pentagon, of $118 billion. This is a mind-boggling aggregation of foreign real estate and buildings possessed by the United States."

This challenging, descriptive, authoritative book is not for the faint-hearted because the military and financial details are chilling, not to mention the sobering assessment of our country's role in the world. The breathtaking scholarly conclusion of this president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego, is that we have gone so far as an empire, that we will have great difficulty returning to be a republic!

Christians who care about the American government and foreign policy will choose to read this significant book.

Bill Hopper, a retired Presbyterian pastor who has served on national staff and elsewhere, wrote this review.

One comes from Jane Hanna, former president of the Witherspoon Society. The other comes in the form of a long essay by Ron Suskind (not really talking about Johnson's book!), former senior national-affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal.   [10-20-04]

Jane Hanna writes from Santa Fe, New Mexico

Hello,

I'm adding my voice to Bill Hopper's suggestion for reading The Sorrows of Empire. I feel it is the most important book we can suggest for helping people understand what our nation has been doing around the world and why we our government is not very popular. If we are fortunate to elect Kerry, our work begins (I don't have much hope for changing a Bush regime) because the control of our country is no longer in a political arena and certainly not very democratic anymore. Chalmers Johnson was here a few weeks ago and was most persuasive. I was reading his Blowback on the way to Colombia, arriving in Bogota as we invaded Iraq. Blowback explained to me why 9/11 happened, even though it's largely about U.S. power in Asia. The war in Iraq has less legitimacy than the war in Vietnam which didn't have any moral justification. I'm glad to see Johnson's book on the web.

There is a lot for peace & justice advocates to do.

Jane

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Imperial Reality

Ron Suskind writes about "Imperial Reality" in the New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004:

A brief sample:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''