WashingtonsBlog May 8 2014

How Empires Justify War

Empires – almost by definition – fight imperial wars to gain land and resources.

But if they admitted to their citizens what they were up to, people wouldn’t be that excited in sacrificing their families’ blood and treasure to fight a series of wars.

So empires always pretend that they’re being attacked … and they are simply fighting to defend themselves.

The ancient Roman leaders whined, “But we have to protect ourselves!”  And every empire has done it since.

For example, FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, a top constitutional and military law expert, Time magazine, the Washington Post and others have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”.  Indeed, the former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge admitted that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection.

The threat from Al Qaeda – while real – has been greatly exaggerated. Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski – also a top foreign policy advisor to President Obama – told the Senate that the war on terror is a “a mythical historical narrative“.  (And statistics arguably show that many terror attacks are actually carried out by non-Muslims.) Continue reading →