The American Empire

Before we spread our wings and contol over the world from north to south and from west to east, there were many empires that came before us. There was the British Empire, the French, the Ottoman, the Roman, the Greek, and many more along the way. England is now a small island in Europe. France is not far from England and has still a little control over few places around the world. Ottoman empire was reduced to Turkey which is fighting to become part of th European Union. The Roman empire is now Italy. The Greek empire is now small Greece. While most people know this they fail to recognize that the US has also became an empire that has been extending for the last hundred years or so. Yes, we do not have a miliatary presence in all over the world but this is the 21st century where the control is not through just arms. It is through the economy and the culture. The language of the world now is English, and not just any English, American English. American companies have their logos imprinted in any country you can name from Coca cola to Pepsi to Nike to Starbucks. Because of this our culture is conquering the world one country after another. Our TV shows are translated and copied from country to another. Even France, a country who tries to preserve its culture as much as possible has been infiltrated by our TV shows. But what does this mean? this means that we are not invading the country physically. We are doing it by invading the minds of the watchers.

Militarily, we have military presence in Japan, South Korea, Afghanistan, East Europe, Germany, and the Middle East. That is aside from the Navy that has fleets in the international water in the all the oceans and even some in the sea. So, if anything happened anywhere in the world our presence will be guaranteed. Our country is the only country where its Military is spread around the world in such way. We have one of the most powerful nuclear arsenal around the world. Thus, it is a known fact that our military might is one not to be reckoned with.

But what does all of this mean? We can not find Usama. We can not win the war in Iraq. We lost the war in Vietnam and we are loosing another war now. We can not force any country to do exactly what we want. Thus, in the Iraqi war we did not have real allies besides England and now even England we are not so sure about. We had the attack of 9/11 which rocked our nation in no way any other event has affected us. We are hated around the world, even by western countries who we think should be our allies. Why is all of this happening? Well, somewhere along the line, just like every empire have risen and fell, we took a wrong turn. We are no longer interested in being the world savior. Our company tycoons are forcing us into battles that we should really not be part of. We are not in the middle east for oil only. We are in there to change the geography of a region. We want full economic control. We are also fighting a small economic battle in west africa where there is hints of oil reserves off of the coast of that region. Let us face it, we became very greedy and arrogant that we became so blinded by the fact that other people have the right to exist freely as well. Yes, the world should thank us for saving them in WWI and WWII but who did we ever thank France when they came to fight the English across the coast of New England in our war of independence? Did we thank the world for all the scientists that we borrow from their countries and bring here to work? Einstein rings a bell? And do we even need a thank you from anyone? Now, we just go in and abuse the resources of countries. Now we ruin the environment with our horrendous gas emissions. Now, we participate in wars that no one invited us to participate in just so we can "promote democracy".

We need to worry about our own domestic problems. We need to worry about the Education system which by all standards is terrible. We need to worry about healthcare which supposed to be ten times better than it is right now if this is the best, richest nation as we claim. We need to worry about the oil crisis that we are dealing with. We need to worry about our economy that is failing day after another. We need to worry about the Dollar value which keeps getting lower day after another. We need to worry about our environment and lower the gas emissions. We need to worry about our children who are dumber and fatter than any other student around the world. We need to refurbish our image in the world instead of this evil image that the world has of us. We have alot of things to worry about besides the wars and the control of the world.

I believe we are the Titanic that is drifting rapidly toward the iceberg which will bring us to the fall of our empire and hegemony. George Washington's farewell address states that we should stay out of wars between other nations, (namely Britain and France at the time), and to avoid foreign alliances. He favored that we have good econonmy relations with other nations but not military alliances. Finally he warned of an over-powerful military establishment, : " avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspcious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particulary hostile to Republican liberty." A careful look in history will tell us that we are doing the exact opposite of his words. Maybe, we should listen before it is too late and the ship sinks.