Free Republic

War and Empire: the Debate -- On-Demand Webcast Victor Davis Hanson v. Arianna Huffington: Is America an Empire? If so, are we an empire of good intentions ... or of reckless might? Where do we go from here? (Video)

An early reference to Alexander of Macedon is the first hint of where the British Museum is heading in its new exhibition, "Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia." After all, to Persians then and Iranians now, there was nothing great about the Alexander who crushed the largest empire the world had yet known. Indeed, his burning of Persepolis in 331 B.C. was considered an act of vandalism. But the show, which runs through Jan. 8, goes further, challenging the version of history that ancient Greece, starting with Herodotus, bequeathed to the West. Put simply, in that version Greece heroically...

China's drive to be an imperialist nation started in 1949, when it has occupied by force Tibet and Eastern Turkistan. Later, after a few years, it absorbed Manchuria and Mongolia as gifts from Stalin. However, that has not stopped the appetite of China. In 1962, China invaded India. China occupies about 10 per cent of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. In 1964, China invaded the USSR, in 1979 Vietnam. It has already taken over the Spartley Island, a potentially rich island with petroleum and natural gas, which belongs to Vietnam. Now it is preparing for the invasion of Taiwan....

WASHINGTON -- There is plenty of blame going around these days for the horrific London bombings. A small minority criticizes London authorities for not expecting the attacks. Even many tolerant Brits are saying that the British Muslim community should have been more watchful. The vast majority, of course, rightly blames the perpetrators themselves, the young Muslim radicals who refer to London as "Londonistan." But there is one group that is almost escaping censure -- and it was this group that deliberately and self-righteously set the stage for what happened nearly two weeks ago: the sweet, well-meaning, all-knowing liberal multiculturalists who...

NOTE: This is a vastly expanded and updated version of a prior review from this group, which includes a host of quotes from those behind the film. It came via the group’s e-mail list, where the site itself appears to be down for the moment. WAR OF THE WORLDS: Steven Spielberg and H.G. Wells on Occupations, Empires, and "Current Relevance" Updated Final, SPOILERS New Republican Archive. Movie Reviews. July 11, 2005. (Contact: newrepublicanarchive@juno.com). War of the Worlds is not only a tense portrayal of the terror and horror of war, particularly for those on the losing side of a modern...

The French sociologist Emmanuel Todd was one of the few experts to predict the fall of the Soviet Union. Now he is predicting the fall of the United States of America. His book After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order (Columbia University Press, 2003) has been a bestseller in Europe. It plays into many Europeans' sentiments against the Iraq war and their belief that America has become an Evil Empire. (See "The Darth Vader fallacy," June 11.) But his book offers encouragement to America-phobes: Far from being an invincible hyperpower, according to Mr. Todd, the United States is...

JERASH, Jordan (AFP) - The sun bears down and dust swirls as Roman centurions, followed by armour-clad legionnaires and bruised gladiators, tramp out of the ancient hippodrome to the trailing sounds of a military march. [Blocked Ads]In the seats all around, 21st century spectators in modern-day Jordan cheer and applaud the spectacle before them -- a one-hour show held in honour of Julius Caesar, and part of Jordan's newest tourist attraction. Starting mid-July, visitors to Jordan can plunge into the past, reliving in a unique location just north of the capital Amman some of the high moments that made the...

The recent votes in France and the Netherlands against the proposed constitution of the European Union are not merely political phenomena. They represent significant actions in the development of Fourth Generation war. Why? Because the root cause of Fourth Generation war is a crisis of legitimacy of the state, and the two referenda saw the French and Dutch people rebel against their elites’ efforts to empty the state of its content. Understanding what happened in these two votes requires a counterintuitive mindset. Normally, we would think of elites as representing the state and the common people rebelling against the state....

It is arguable that the most famous line in “Revenge of the Sith” comes from Padme Amidala. When Palpatine announces to a rapturous Senate that the Republic is to be re-organised as the first Galactic Empire, she says: "So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause”. We are supposed to infer from this statement that freedom has been traded for security, and democracy traded for a dictatorship. As such, it is supposed to be a dark day, a tragedy, one which will take 20 years and the original three films to remedy. However the question that no one asks...

STAR WARS RETURNS today with its fifth installment, "Attack of the Clones." There will be talk of the Force and the Dark Side and the epic morality of George Lucas's series. But the truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good. It's a difficult leap to make--embracing Darth Vader and the Emperor over the plucky and attractive Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia--but a careful examination of the facts, sorted apart from Lucas's off-the-shelf moral cues, makes a quite convincing case. First, an...

Book VI Now that we have learned to distinguish among the different forms of government according to the characteristics of their sovereigns and seen how one form, through decay or revolution, slips into another or turns into an illegal form, we need, says Aristotle, to give some attention to the different varieties of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. For us modern Americans, of course, the most interesting discussion concerns democracy, because that is the form of government we say we have. The root principle of democracy is eleutheria, political liberty, both in the sense that citizens are eligible for office—they take...

Did I miss something? Where did all the “not since Rome” bombast, talk of America’s “benevolent global hegemony,” “Pax Americana,” and the New World Order disappear to? Whatever happened to the “jodhpurs and pith helmets” crowd? Just a year ago, in the Irving Kristol Lecture at the annual AEI dinner, columnist Charles Krauthammer rhapsodized about America’s “global dominion” and our having “acquired the largest seeming empire in the history of the world.” We have “overwhelming global power,” said Krauthammer. We are history’s “designated custodians of the international system.” When the Soviet Union fell, “something new was born, something utterly new—a...

Cypriots angry at UK London undermining a policy banning links to island’s north, Nicosia says AFPCypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos (r) and Foreign Minister George Iacovou at the launch of NATO’s summit in Brussels earlier this week. Papadopoulos used the opportunity to stress the ‘bitterness’ he claimed the UK has created in Cyprus.By Michele Kambas - ReutersNICOSIA - The love-hate relationship between Cyprus and its former colonial master Britain appears to be headed for stormy waters over trade and travel links to the breakaway Turkish statelet on the island’s northern tip.The row burst into the open at this week’s EU-US...

When I was in high school, every once in a while, our class would be visited by a graduate who was currently attending a college as a Freshman or Sophomore. As this college student would speak with his former teacher, we would be somewhat impressed with the “vast knowledge” of this person who seemed like a man of the world in comparison to us mere high school kids. Of course, these college guys weren’t really all that knowledgeable but they still appeared to make an impression on us little high school kids who didn’t know any better. And now...

This once useful linguistic distinction has been completely lost in the intellectual discourse of contemporary politics. Lee Harris explains the vital differences between hegemony and empire and why it matters today.The word "hegemony" has become an essential part of the jargon of the anti-American left. Followers of Noam Chomsky, for example, use the word as often as possible. For most of them, hegemony has become a synonym for empire, and its frequent use a badge of intellectual sophistication. Hence the many references to American hegemony in the political discourse of the noveau enlightened: it is a bit like a password...

In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations. Published in the February, 1899 issue of McClure’s Magazine, the poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control. Theodore Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and then president, copied the poem and sent it to his...

The effort to spread standardised western democracy also suffers a fundamental paradox. A growing part of human life now occurs beyond the influence of voters - in transnational public and private entities that have no electorates. And electoral democracy cannot function effectively outside political units such as nation-states. The powerful states are therefore trying to spread a system that even they find inadequate to meet today's challenges. Europe proves the point. A body such as the European Union could develop into a powerful and effective structure precisely because it has no electorate other than a small number of member governments....

The Empire Has No Clothes U.S. Foreign Policy ExposedBy Ivan Eland Independent Institute Oakland, California HC, 294 pages US$24.95 ISBN: 0-9459-9998-4 The rise of the American empire By Steven Martinovich web posted January 17, 2005 Students of history are often amazed how empires sometimes came into being almost accidentally. Rome, during its early Republican years, often grew by being attacked by its neighbours and vanquishing them. The Victorian British originally sought to protect trade and overseas interests before waking up one day and realizing that they controlled a quarter of the world's land, people and all of its oceans. Others,...

Any great work is going to generate great opposition. After Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gave his State of the State address on Wednesday, the forces against him quickly shaped up to do battle against his substantive proposals to solve the state's gnawing financial and other problems. Indeed, even a day before the speech, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, a likely Democratic rival should the governor seek re-election in 2006, blasted a shot across his bow. In a press release, Mr. Angelides said that "the governor's path has led directly to $26 billion in credit-card debt and a looming $8 billion deficit that...

Mykola Riabchuk is a Ukrainian writer and publicist, co-founder and co-editor of the Kyiv-based "Krytyka" monthly. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the USSR and, at the time, a strong opponent of Ukrainian independence, has compared recently the Ukrainian "orange revolution" to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Volodymyr Lytvyn, the head of Ukrainian parliament, has defined the event as the definite end of the Soviet Empire, its final and irreversible break-up. All the lofty rhetoric aside, the both politicians are essentially right. The crumbling of the formidable Communist Empire, unleashed by the Gorbachev's perestroika, resulted in an impressive chain...

Alexander Hamilton wasn't the only major American political figure to take part in a mortal duel. Two years after Aaron Burr killed Hamilton in Weehawken, N.J., Andrew Jackson stood 10 paces from a lawyer named Charles Dickinson after Dickinson had said something unflattering about Jackson's wife. The first shot struck Jackson in the shoulder, breaking two ribs before lodging close to his heart. Losing blood but still standing, Jackson took steady aim and shot Dickinson dead. Jackson would live for another four decades with that bullet in his chest, personally taking part in some of America's bloodiest Indian wars, leading...

<p>The situation seems to be deteriorating daily. To brief you on a few things: Electricity is lousy. Many areas are on the damned 2 hours by 4 hours schedule and there are other areas that are completely in the dark – like A'adhamiya. The problem is that we're not getting much generator electricity because fuel has become such a big problem. People have to wait in line overnight now to fill up the car. It's a mystery. It really is. There was never such a gasoline crisis as the one we're facing now. We're an oil country and yet there isn't enough gasoline to go around...</p>

BANGKOK Anyone who observed the summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations last week could be excused for wondering if George Soros is right about the U.S. economy. . Soros painted an ominous picture of America's future in his book, "The Bubble of American Supremacy." Judging by how the United States seemed all but ignored by leaders attending the Asean meeting in Vientiane, Laos, Soros might be on to something. .

Blogs: New Medium, Old Politics Jim Boulet noticed that CBS News chief political writer David Paul Kuhn wants the federal government to regulate bloggers. Why on earth would CBS News have an axe to grind with bloggers? Oh, that's right, the bloggers exposed CBS News as a bunch of hacks...The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum finds Kuhn's column "embarrassingly inaccurate."

While it is premature to predict the outcome of the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, it is not too early to assess the stakes involved, to identify its initial losers and winners, and to reflect on its broader policy implications for the U.S. and the European Union. The stakes are enormous and they go far beyond the issue of democracy in Ukraine itself. Although Ukraine has been plagued by corruption and abuse of power, which have eroded its initially impressive democracy, the country still did hold -- unlike Russia -- two genuinely free presidential elections. And again, unlike Russia's conduct in Chechnya,...

NEW YORK -- A man jumped to his death Friday from the 86th-floor observation deck at the Empire State Building, one of Manhattan's busiest tourist destinations, police said. The apparent suicide forced police to briefly close the landmark on Fifth Avenue to tourists in New York for the holiday weekend. The man apparently climbed over a security fence that encloses the observation deck before leaping off. He hit a landing on the sixth floor, where he died instantly, police said. No identification was found on his body. At least 31 other people have committed suicide at the Empire State Building...

Quick Humore Break. No note-worthy transactions in hot-stove baseball yet, but will the Yankees revamp their pitching staff? Will the "Evil Empire" strike back? Someone in Boston thinks so.

November 22, 2004 issue Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative Goodbye, Dollar—and Empire by Pat Buchanan Whoever wins Nov. 2, two predictions seem solid: the mighty U.S. dollar has begun an inexorable decline, and the American empire is coming to an end. For whether George W. Bush wins or loses, America is headed for a political gridlock that will rule out any bipartisan assault on our “twin deficits.” No matter who wins, the House Republicans of Tom DeLay will retain the numbers to veto any tax increase, while Democrats will retain the strength to prevent any serious cuts in entitlements....

THE government was drawn into a diplomatic row with the United States and Italy last night, after a senior British ambassador described President George Bush as "the best recruiting sergeant for al-Qaeda". Sir Ivor Roberts, the British ambassador in Rome, made the extraordinary comment during a weekend meeting of politicians and journalists. His remarks were designed to be off-the-record but they proved so explosive that Italy's leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, decided to breach the rule and publish them. Corriere reported Sir Ivor as saying: "George W Bush is the best recruiting sergeant for al-Qaeda. If there is anyone ready...

Putin in push to extend his term Mark Franchetti, Moscow20sep04 RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin is considering extending his term of office, due to expire in 2008, in a sign of his determination to tighten his grip on power and crack down on terrorism after the Beslan school massacre. Moscow sources say plans are being drawn up to lengthen Mr Putin's mandate from four years to seven, or to change the rules so he can stand for a third term as president. If implemented, this measure would make Mr Putin the longest-serving Russian leader since Leonid Brezhnev, who ruled the...

People awake in the morning to the news of dozens dying in US bombings of Fallujah and Najaf. People sleep at night to the news that Israeli tanks stormed Palestinian areas, killing many or a few. People wake up again and go to bed again, exposed all the while to horrific reports of abduction and slaughter, of civilians having their throats cut for no fault of their own. Videotapes available in Baghdad now show the tragic fate of one Abdel-Al, an Egyptian driver who was tried, had his tongue severed, then his head. His judges prance in front of the...

When the Chechen terrorist mastermind Shamil Basayev hijacked hundreds of hostages including many schoolchildren in Beslan last week, it was not for a narrow nationalist cause. His objective is more radical - and less likely to be achieved - than the aims of more run-of-the-mill Chechen nationalists, who merely want full independence from Russia. He dreams of establishing an Islamic Emirate across the North Caucasus, and to do so, he has been fomenting the Islamic rebellion that plagues states across the broad stretch of territory from the Red Sea to the Caspian. As President Vladimir Putin waded through the cold...

When U.S. Marines were ordered to withdraw from Fallujah last April, I titled my column “Fallujah: High Tide of American Empire.” For the pullback meant that America was either unwilling to take the casualties to crush the Sunni resistance in Fallujah or unwilling to pay the price of Arab rage if they won a bloody battle. Whatever the motive of the generals in ceding Fallujah, it was a retreat. The Islamic world saw it as such. Since then, fighting in the Sunni Triangle, Sadr City, Najaf, and the Shia cities of the south has escalated. When Baghdad fell, Gen. John...

Cyrus the Great Cylinder, The First Charter of Human Rights By 546 BCE, Cyrus had defeated Croesus, the Lydian king of fabled wealth, and had secured control of the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, Armenia, and the Greek colonies along the Levant. Moving east, he took Parthia (land of the Arsacids, not to be confused with Parsa, which was to the southwest), Chorasmis, and Bactria. He besieged and captured Babylon in 539 and released the Jews who had been held captive there, thus earning his immortalization in the Book of Isaiah. When he died in 529, Cyrus's kingdom extended as...

The History Channel is going to air a new historical series entitled DECISIVE BATTLES including some classic wars between ancient Persian armies and Roman and Greek ones. The History Channel goes on location to the actual battlefields and integrates cutting-edge videogame technology to bring history and imagination together in the new series DECISIVE BATTLES. The half-hour series DECISIVE BATTLES premieres Friday, July 23 at 9-9:30pm ET/PT. The series is hosted by Matthew Settle (Band of Brothers) on location at the ancient battlefields and features expert commentary from the world©s foremost historians. DECISIVE BATTLES is unlike any series The History Channel...

Heart of smugness Unlike Belgium, Britain is still complacently ignoring the gory cruelties of its empire Maria Misra Tuesday July 23, 2002 The Guardian So the Belgians are to return to the Heart of Darkness in an attempt finally to exorcise their imperial demons. Stung by another book cataloguing the violence and misery inflicted by King Leopold's empire on the Congo in the late 19th and early 20th century, the state-funded Royal Museum for Central Africa in Brussels has commissioned a group of historians to pass authoritative judgment on accusations of genocide: forced labour, systematic rape, torture and murder of...

This study evolved from the Threat Matrix Thread to the Threat Potentials Thread. The study is becoming detailed and I thought it needed it's own thread to make easier access to the information. I am going to copy and paste the first seven chapters and comments. Feel free to comment at any time on any verse and or cross reference. May GOD Bless us with His divine wisdom. Amen

Juvenal's claim was dismissed as poetic exaggeration until archaeological discoveries suggested that the Romans may, after all, have extended their power across the Irish Sea. In 1927 a unique group of burials was unearthed on Lambay, a small island off the coast of County Dublin... Irish archaeologist Barry Raftery plausibly suggests that the burials may represent Britons fleeing reprisals after the Romans crushed a revolt by the Brigantes in the year 74... At Drumanagh in County Dublin, trial explorations have revealed traces of a Roman coastal fort on a promontory jutting into the Irish Sea. The 40-acre site is defended...

This idea was first proposed by Homer Hasenphlug Dubs, an Oxford University professor of Chinese history, who speculated in 1955 that some of the 10,000 Roman prisoners taken by the Parthians after the battle of Carrhae in southeastern Turkey in 53 B.C. made their way east to Uzbekistan to enlist with Jzh Jzh against the Han. Chinese accounts of the battle, in which Jzh Jzh was decapitated and his army defeated, note unusual military formations and the use of wooden fortifications foreign to the nomadic Huns. Dubs postulated that after the battle the Chinese employed the Roman mercenaries as border...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. British historian David Cannadine has described the way his countrymen look back at the 19th century when London was the capital of a global superpower. “On the left of the political spectrum, the usual response has varied between guilt and anger– at the poverty and inequality, the hypocrisy and humbug, the snobbery and exploitation, the Philistine materialism and heartless laissez-faire, the imperial hubris and racial arrogance....But to those on the right, the Victorian age was a time when Britain was truly at its zenith, when the country was the workshop of...

LONDON (Reuters) - The "arcane" system of honouring citizens with knighthoods should be scrapped, a parliamentary committee says. Racial diversity should be better reflected in the awards and the inflammatory word "Empire" should be dropped from honours such as Order of the British Empire (OBE), the Public Administration Committee said in a report published on Tuesday. "The current system is terribly secretive ... It's over-complicated and it's certainly out of date," Labour committee member Anne Campbell, told BBC radio. "We need a system that really accords more with the modern day," she added. Obscure honours such as "Orders of...

Here's a dinner-party talking point that can run and run, certainly until November and, if the Democrats win the US presidency, for several months beyond. Would John Kerry, far from quickly bringing US troops home, keep them in Iraq even longer than George Bush? My answer, regrettably, is yes - which means that the Democratic convention in Boston later this month will be a sad affair for the people of Iraq, where polls consistently show a majority in favour of early withdrawal. (snip snip) But there is another possibility. Iraq has been a millstone for the past year and a...

<p>Several years ago, I was at a conference in London. I took an evening to do some exploring. Taking the underground to Piccadilly Circus, I tried to find a traditional English pub for fish and chips.</p> <p>I couldn't find one. There in the cultural heart of the former British empire, all one could see was McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut and an occasional sushi establishment. The fashions worn by the thronging crowds were American, as was the music blaring from almost every club. The British invasion of the 1960s had been reversed.</p>

In early May, Niall Ferguson, the celebrity Scottish historian, looked out at a packed house seething with antagonism. He had come to Washington to deliver a talk at the Council on Foreign Relations defending his idea that the war in Iraq had not only been the right thing to do, but also ought to be the first step towards a wide-ranging American empire. It would be difficult to imagine a moment when the capital's bipartisan policy elite --Ferguson's audience--were less inclined to be receptive to his ideas. The first accounts of the torture at Abu Ghraib had just appeared, and...

WASHINGTON -- The Ottoman Empire of Turkey lasted nearly 600 years, from the 14th century to 1922. The Byzantine Empire lasted 1,100 years, from 330 to 1453 A.D. The Brits ruled the world for well over a century, as did the Moguls of India and too many Chinese emperors to count. We can now say that the much-touted "American Empire" of the radicals in the Bush administration has seen its brief spring and summer and is approaching the snows of late December. Two years, and the Great American Empire that the likes of Dick Cheney and the neocons dreamed of...

<p>I hate the word empire when used to describe the United States. If the US is an empire, it sure is empire-lite. We are not expanding the borders. It’s hard to have colonies when you don't have any colonists. Aside from Iraq for the next three and a half weeks, we do not administer foreign countries.</p>

Summary: Did the United Kingdom's influence in its heyday match the United States' today? Two Hegemonies provides an answer; but "empire" might be the better word.Niall Ferguson is Herzog Professor of History at the Stern School of Business, New York University, and a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He is the author of Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power.From Foreign Affairs September/October 2003Hegemony or Empire? By Niall FergusonTwo Hegemonies: Britain 1846-1914 and the United States 1941-2001 .Patrick Karl O'Brien & Armand Clesse. Aldershot, U.K.: Asghate, 2002, 365 $84.95...

Keeping up with the empire by Thijs Westerbeek, 24 May 2004 Hard currency: this silver Roman coin (a denarius, front and back shown) from the 2nd century AD indicates trade between the inhabitants of De Bloemert and Rome The Roman Empire has been well documented. Over the years written history and archaeology have brought to the surface, sometimes literally unearthed, a whole society. Thus Roman architecture, religion, military strategy and legal structures hold little mystery. Compared to this depth of knowledge, many of those living outside the boundaries of the Empire are lost in time. But now an archaeological excavation...

April 26, 2004 'Empire' -- A Losing Political Issue by Christopher PrebleChristopher Preble is a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy (www.realisticforeignpolicy.org) and the director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.Not quite a year ago, when the euphoria over the U.S. military's sweeping victory over Saddam Hussein's armies was at its high point, Washington was consumed with talk of empire."No need to run away from the label," wrote Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, "America's destiny is to police the world." Harvard's Michael Ignatieff agreed. "Imperialism doesn't stop being necessary," he said, "just...

April 25, 2004 -- Colossus: The Price of America's Empire by Niall Ferguson, Penguin Press, 366 pages, $25.95 JOHN Kerry makes the case that the present administration has unduly alienated our allies - leaving us alone, isolated and increasingly frustrated in trying to do too much overseas with too few resources. Should we Americans rightly be worried about similar charges from allies and enemies alike of unilateralism, preemption and hegemony? Not to worry, Niall Ferguson assures us in his latest reflection on the state of the world. The problem of failed states, global terrorism and European fury abroad has nothing...