An Empire Of Nothing At All - A Staggeringly Well-Funded Blowback Machine | Zero Hedge
Description: "The U.S. military and the national security state that those wars emboldened have become, in effect, a staggeringly well-funded blowback machine... Americans have generally ignored their country’s wars, even as the blowback began. Someday, they will have no choice but to pay attention."

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Most CNBC pundits don’t even mention how the weaker dollar has given the economy a short-term spurt. And the couple that do won’t even acknowledge that it’s temporary.

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# An Empire Of Nothing At All - A Staggeringly Well-Funded Blowback Machine

Authored by Tom Engelhardt via TomDispatch.com,

[This essay is the introduction to Tom Engelhardt’s new book, A Nation Unmade by War, a Dispatch Book published by Haymarket Books.]

As I was putting the finishing touches on my new book, the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute published an estimate of the taxpayer dollars that will have gone into America’s war on terror from September 12, 2001, through fiscal year 2018. That figure: a cool $5.6 trillion (including the future costs of caring for our war vets).

On average, that’s at least $23,386 per taxpayer.

Keep in mind that such figures, however eye-popping, are only the dollar costs of our wars. They don’t, for instance, include the psychic costs to the Americans mangled in one way or another in those never-ending conflicts. They don’t include the costs to this country’s infrastructure, which has been crumbling while taxpayer dollars flow copiously and in a remarkably -- in these years, almost uniquely -- bipartisan fashion into what’s still laughably called “national security.” That’s not, of course, what would make most of us more secure, but what would make them -- the denizens of the national security state -- ever more secure in Washington and elsewhere. We’re talking about the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. nuclear complex, and the rest of that state-within-a-state, including its many intelligence agencies and the warrior corporations that have, by now, been fused into that vast and vastly profitable interlocking structure.

In reality, the costs of America’s wars, still spreading in the Trump era, are incalculable. Just look at photos of the cities of Ramadi or Mosul in Iraq, Raqqa or Aleppo in Syria, Sirte in Libya, or Marawi in the southern Philippines, all in ruins in the wake of the conflicts Washington set off in the post–9/11 years, and try to put a price on them. Those views of mile upon mile of rubble, often without a building still standing untouched, should take anyone’s breath away. Some of those cities may never be fully rebuilt.

And how could you even begin to put a dollars-and-cents value on the larger human costs of those wars: the hundreds of thousands of dead? The tens of millions of people displaced in their own countries or sent as refugees fleeing across any border in sight? How could you factor in the way those masses of uprooted peoples of the Greater Middle East and Africa are unsettling other parts of the planet? Their presence (or more accurately a growing fear of it) has, for instance, helped fuel an expanding set of right-wing “populist” movements that threaten to tear Europe apart. And who could forget the role that those refugees -- or at least fantasy versions of them -- played in Donald Trump’s full-throated, successful pitch for the presidency? What, in the end, might be the cost of that?

### Opening the Gates of Hell

America’s never-ending twenty-first-century conflicts were triggered by the decision of George W. Bush and his top officials to instantly define their response to attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center by a tiny group of jihadis as a “war”; then to proclaim it nothing short of a “Global War on Terror”; and finally to invade and occupy first Afghanistan and then Iraq, with dreams of dominating the Greater Middle East -- and ultimately the planet -- as no other imperial power had ever done.

Their overwrought geopolitical fantasies and their sense that the U.S. military was a force capable of accomplishing anything they willed it to do launched a process that would cost this world of ours in ways that no one will ever be able to calculate. Who, for instance, could begin to put a price on the futures of the children whose lives, in the aftermath of those decisions, would be twisted and shrunk in ways frightening even to imagine? Who could tote up what it means for so many millions of this planet’s young to be deprived of homes, parents, educations -- of anything, in fact, approximating the sort of stability that might lead to a future worth imagining?

Though few may remember it, I’ve never forgotten the 2002 warning issued by Amr Moussa, then head of the Arab League. An invasion of Iraq would, he predicted that September, “open the gates of hell.” Two years later, in the wake of the actual invasion and the U.S. occupation of that country, he altered his comment slightly. “The gates of hell,” he said, “are open in Iraq.”

His assessment has proven unbearably prescient -- and one not only applicable to Iraq. Fourteen years after that invasion, we should all now be in some kind of mourning for a world that won’t ever be. It wasn’t just the US military that, in the spring of 2003, passed through those gates to hell. In our own way, we all did. Otherwise, Donald Trump wouldn’t have become president.

I don’t claim to be an expert on hell. I have no idea exactly what circle of it we’re now in, but I do know one thing: we are there.

### The Infrastructure of a Garrison State

If I could bring my parents back from the dead right now, I know that this country in its present state would boggle their minds. They wouldn’t recognize it. If I were to tell them, for instance, that just three men -- Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett -- now possess as much wealth as the bottom half of the US population, of 160 million Americans, they would never believe me.

How, for instance, could I begin to explain to them the ways in which, in these years, money flowed ever upward into the pockets of the immensely wealthy and then down again into what became one-percent elections that would finally ensconce a billionaire and his family in the White House? How would I explain to them that, while leading congressional Democrats and Republicans couldn’t say often enough that this country was uniquely greater than any that ever existed, none of them could find the funds -- some $5.6 trillion for starters -- necessary for our roads, dams, bridges, tunnels, and other crucial infrastructure? This on a planet where what the news likes to call “extreme weather” is increasingly wreaking havocon that same infrastructure.

My parents wouldn’t have thought such things possible. Not in America. And somehow I’d have to explain to them that they had returned to a nation which, though few Americans realize it, has increasingly been unmade by war -- by the conflicts Washington’s war on terror triggered that have now morphed into the wars of so many and have, in the process, changed us.

Such conflicts on the global frontiers have a tendency to come home in ways that can be hard to track or pin down. After all, unlike those cities in the Greater Middle East, ours aren’t yet in ruins -- though some of them may be heading in that direction, even if in slow motion. This country is, at least theoretically, still near the height of its imperial power, still the wealthiest nation on the planet. And yet it should be clear enough by now that we’ve crippled not just other nations but ourselves in ways that I suspect -- though I’ve tried over these years to absorb and record them as best I could -- we can still barely see or grasp.

In my new book, A Nation Unmade by War, the focus is on a country increasingly unsettled and transformed by spreading wars to which most of its citizens were, at best, only half paying attention. Certainly, Trump’s election was a sign of how an American sense of decline had already come home to roost in the era of the rise of the national security state (and little else).

Though it’s not something normally said here, to my mind President Trump should be considered part of the costs of those wars come home. Without the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and what followed, I doubt he would have been imaginable as anything but the host of a reality TV show or the owner of a series of failed casinos. Nor would the garrison-state version of Washington he now occupies be conceivable, nor the generals of our disastrous wars whom he’s surrounded himself with, nor the growth of a surveillance state that would have staggered George Orwell.

### The Makings of a Blowback Machine

It took Donald Trump -- give him credit where it’s due -- to make us begin to grasp that we were living in a different and devolving world. And none of this would have been imaginable if, in the aftermath of 9/11, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney & Co. hadn’t felt the urge to launch the wars that led us through those gates of hell. Their soaring geopolitical dreams of global domination proved to be nightmares of the first order. They imagined a planet unlike any in the previous half millennium of imperial history, in which a single power would basically dominate everything until the end of time. They imagined, that is, the sort of world that, in Hollywood, had been associated only with the most malign of evil characters.

And here was the result of their conceptual overreach: never, it could be argued, has a great power still in its imperial prime proven quite so incapable of applying its military and political might in a way that would advance its aims. It’s a strange fact of this century that the U.S. military has been deployed across vast swaths of the planet and somehow, again and again, has found itself overmatched by underwhelming enemy forces and incapable of producing any results other than destruction and further fragmentation. And all of this occurred at the moment when the planet most needed a new kind of knitting together, at the moment when humanity’s future was at stake in ways previously unimaginable, thanks to its still-increasing use of fossil fuels.

In the end, the last empire may prove to be an empire of nothing at all -- a grim possibility which has been a focus of TomDispatch, the website I’ve run since November 2002. Of course, when you write pieces every couple of weeks for years on end, it would be surprising if you didn’t repeat yourself. The real repetitiousness, however, wasn’t at TomDispatch. It was in Washington. The only thing our leaders and generals have seemed capable of doing, starting from the day after the 9/11 attacks, is more or less the same thing with the same dismal results, again and again.

The U.S. military and the national security state that those wars emboldened have become, in effect -- and with a bow to the late Chalmers Johnson (a TomDispatch stalwart and a man who knew the gates of hell when he saw them) -- a staggeringly well-funded blowback machine. In all these years, while three administrations pursued the spreading war on terror, America’s conflicts in distant lands were largely afterthoughts to its citizenry. Despite the largest demonstrations in history aimed at stopping a war before it began, once the invasion of Iraq occurred, the protests died out and, ever since, Americans have generally ignored their country’s wars, even as the blowback began. Someday, they will have no choice but to pay attention.

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38BWD22 Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:26 Permalink

No more wars. War is wicked. War is expensive.

A very bad deal.

EDIT: War promotes the Deep State big time. No gracias.

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revolla 38BWD22 Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:32 Permalink

Cui Bono

Not America. Not the Arab world.

All these wars only benefit Israhell.

That's why the War On Terror was planned and executed from Tel Aviv.

In reply to No more wars. War is… by 38BWD22

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Escrava Isaura revolla Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:41 Permalink

Wrong, just look at history.

America did not support Israel expansion in the beginning but Israel continues expanding because Israel didn’t care about the US.

America view of Israel changed in 1967 and since then every US administration became more and more supportive of Israel.

In reply to All these wars only… by revolla

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revolla Escrava Isaura Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:43 Permalink

True History contradicts your assumption.

America bullied every country in the UN to vote for the partition of Palestine in 1947, which paved the way for Israhell. Believe it or not, the last holdout at the UN was Haiti.

With every early war that almost wiped Israhell of the map, America had to threaten the Arab countries to back off, and at times even provided air support.

Then Israhell did 9/11 and dragged the US into the Middle East even deeper.

In reply to Wrong, just look at history… by Escrava Isaura

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directaction revolla Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:00 Permalink

It'll take a draft to bring it home, to bring the horror of wars home, and to get the people protesting again.

In reply to History says otherwise… by revolla

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Billy the Poet directaction Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:20 Permalink

Americans have generally ignored their country’s wars, even as the blowback began.

Everyone's throwing around charges of insouciance these days.

In reply to It'll take a draft to bring… by directaction

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hxc directaction Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:32 Permalink

Careful what you fucking wish for.

In reply to It'll take a draft to bring… by directaction

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Escrava Isaura revolla Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:25 Permalink

I understand that history cannot be replicated, but what we see now between US and Israel was very different from the past.

Also, the reader need to pay attention that there are two factions (DoD and State Department) that play a major role from the US side and that they don’t agree with each other very much. Read Chomsky about these two dynamics playing out.

Below is an extract from Wikipedia:

During World War II, while US foreign policy decisions were often ad hoc moves and solutions dictated by the demands of the war, the Zionist movement made a fundamental departure from traditional Zionist policy and its stated goals, at the Biltmore Conference in May 1942.[15] Previous stated policy towards establishing a Jewish "national home" in Palestine were gone; these were replaced with its new policy "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth" like other nations, in cooperation with America, not Britain.[16] Two attempts by Congress in 1944 to pass resolutions declaring US government support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine were objected to by the Departments of War and State, because of wartime considerations and Arab opposition to the creation of a Jewish state. The resolutions were permanently dropped.[17]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93United_States_relations#History

Note: Department of War, today’s department of Defense (right ideology), were the first ones o support Israel state, and not the State Department (left ideology). There’s a big distinction there that takes lots of research to understand their disagreements about Israeli policies.

In reply to History says otherwise… by revolla

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commiebastid Escrava Isaura Fri, 05/18/2018 - 01:26 Permalink

history https://www.alternet.org/story/147865/noam_chomsky%3A_the_real_reasons_…

In reply to I understand that history… by Escrava Isaura

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Chris2 revolla Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:57 Permalink

Greek Empire 3000 yrs

Roman Empire 500 yrs

Ottoman Empire 600 yrs

British Empire 200 yrs.

Soviet Empire 74 yrs.

American Empire 74 yrs.

ever shifting tide in life

In reply to History says otherwise… by revolla

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css1971 revolla Fri, 05/18/2018 - 04:03 Permalink

Oh FFS. Please stop with the insane incoherent drivel.

America is the Petrodollar Empire

9/11 was planned and executed by Saudis because America provides military support to the Saudi monarchy in return for support of the petrodollar.

Go learn what money is.

Jeez. The fucking education system today.

In reply to History says otherwise… by revolla

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Savvy revolla Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:54 Permalink

Bullshit. US bailed in wholeheartedly to continue the fossil dollar.

In reply to All these wars only… by revolla

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Pol Pot 38BWD22 Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:36 Permalink

No more wars = No more American way of life.

The American way of life and standard of living is dependent on creating war, after war, after war...we live off the blood of others.

Will Americans give up the pickup, big screen tv, a two car garage and 50 lbs of excess fat to save a few foreigners......

i think not....

www.megaprize.io

In reply to No more wars. War is… by 38BWD22

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bobcatz Pol Pot Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:37 Permalink

That's simply a fallacy.The propaganda is that the American way of life depends on war so the people can support the war agenda. Don't buy into it. Only a few benefit from wars.

“War is a racket. It always has been.” General Smedley D. Butler, America’s most decorated soldier.

In reply to No more wars = No more… by Pol Pot

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hxc bobcatz Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:35 Permalink

See? No links and you get upvotes. Though the other biblicism crap has been getting old for fucking years now. Not a zio btw.

In reply to That's pure and simple a… by bobcatz

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raskefing bobcatz Fri, 05/18/2018 - 01:56 Permalink

Sadly he is right ! the MIC only needs 20 percent of the population to believe and they have control

The rest of the pop is too lethargic and unaware to resist.

In reply to That's pure and simple a… by bobcatz

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Chris2 Pol Pot Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:59 Permalink

Are you kidding?

They don't decide, they live in the world given to them.

In reply to No more wars = No more… by Pol Pot

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TheEndIsNear 38BWD22 Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:39 Permalink

War is a racket, by by Smedley Butler

In reply to No more wars. War is… by 38BWD22

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ebworthen 38BWD22 Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:23 Permalink

Black Sabbath - "War Pigs": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQUXuQ6Zd9w

In reply to No more wars. War is… by 38BWD22

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dogfish ebworthen Fri, 05/18/2018 - 05:04 Permalink

War Pigs,perfect description. Black Sabbath was my favorite in the 70s.

In reply to Black Sabbath - "War Pigs": … by ebworthen

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samsara Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:28 Permalink

Great stuff by Tom as usual and dead on

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Archive_file Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:35 Permalink

Until American cities get turned to rubble and it’s children starved and burned to death, America’s focus will be on the super bowl, World Series, and porn stars.

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TBT or not TBT Archive_file Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:53 Permalink

And equities.

In reply to Until American cities get… by Archive_file

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Megaton Jim Archive_file Fri, 05/18/2018 - 05:53 Permalink

Don't forget porn, online gambling and the Kardashians!

In reply to Until American cities get… by Archive_file

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Rex Andrus Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:49 Permalink

Patrick Little for Senate to depose Nancy Pelosi

Marine! What is your campaign contact info? You are blacklisted already!

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besnook Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:50 Permalink

i believe there is a group of people who have been taught for a coupla thousand years that they are the rulers of the world and the rest of us are chattel. they believe that this is their fate. they think they have, finally, the opportunity to reach their destiny and they will not let anyone get in their way. can you guess who they might be?

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Rex Andrus besnook Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:53 Permalink

Read The House of Krupp

In reply to i believe there is a group… by besnook

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TheEndIsNear Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:53 Permalink

Just devaluing the currency enough so that most people are starving as in Venezuela should be enough, although the Venezuelans don't seem to be overthrowing their government.

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css1971 TheEndIsNear Fri, 05/18/2018 - 04:11 Permalink

They devalue it every year, in order to skim about 6% from the citizenry every year.

It's a river of value flowing up the pyramid to the enlightened elites.

In reply to Just devaluing the currency… by TheEndIsNear

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MusicIsYou Thu, 05/17/2018 - 23:58 Permalink

Hmm, I wonder if people who work for a living in the west will ever figure out that as long as national debt and printing money from nothingness is making a small number of elites mega rich, regular people will never earn an actual living wage. Yeah because in reality the U.S has been bankrupt since WW1, and the reason average people can not start a new job and actually afford their life is because - getting a low salary is the same thing as getting hugely taxed, you just never see the money you could have gotten paid. Yeah, instead of workers getting paid a living wage and then getting taxed to death, they just pay most workers low wages and don't make them pay much income tax. And all the stupid zombie workers gleefully take part in that monetary system. Yeah, and the few people who do get paid a comfortable living wage are playing the role of 'foot-soldiers' for the system as they lecture others about how they should just get a second or third job, and have 2 or 3 roommates to split rent.

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Rex Andrus Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:01 Permalink

Why isn't Patrick Little USMC (R) for California Senator on the California primary ballot?

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JailBanksters Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:08 Permalink

Is the US Military the The Galactic Empire, The Rebel Alliance, The Borg, The Goa'uld or The Ori

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MusicIsYou Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:15 Permalink

Most people are dumber than a box of rocks, who don't grasp the reason they get a low salary that they can exist on is because a low salary is the same thing as a higher salary that gets hugely taxed. Yeah, your taxes come out of your pay by them just paying you minimum wage in the first place, instead of taxing your pay down until it's at that same level. That is why Minimum wage was established to begin with, to give elites a "Table" to look at while they screw you. That's why minimum wage earners don't usually pay income tax or much tax, it's because you were taxed by never getting more money. I would not expect people who don't grasp the ability to apply mathematics to their reality to understand what I'm getting at. This is the true reality of people's existence but it doesn't really matter because nobody is going to actually do anything about it, and it won't stop until the wheels just fall off the system.

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kudocast Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:21 Permalink

Amen.

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NemesisteM Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:39 Permalink

Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex decades ago. The U.S exports death wholesale at the taxpayer's expense to protect the interests of Saudi Arabia and Isntreal. Our dependence on foreign oil must end at some point. I'm hoping algae biofeuels pave the way for the future. Unfortunately as resources diminish in supply, the real wars will begin and it will make WW2 look like a picnic.

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css1971 NemesisteM Fri, 05/18/2018 - 04:16 Permalink

Thorium

In reply to Eisenhower warned of the… by NemesisteM

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rada10 Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:40 Permalink

Yeah... it is all Trump's fault for what the previous administrations did (or didn't do).

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MusicIsYou Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:41 Permalink

The U.S is an empire of nothingness, and America is chock full of dumb people that for some odd reason elites are proud to be in charge of. It doesn't require much intelligence to be over a dumb population. That is the reason in western society even the so-called intelligent elites are dumb, they're measuring themselves from the baseline of the dumb population. Since the baseline of your pyramids are dumb people, that means your little 'All seeing eye' on top of the pyramid is not really seeing that much.

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galant Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:42 Permalink

In fact, the US imperialist wars were first officially formulated in 1992 when Dick Cheney was Defense Secretary under Bush senior. The Soviet Union had collapsed and Bush triumphantly declared America as Sole Superpower.

Cheney’s deputy secretary, Zionist Paul Wolfowitz, was responsible for developing a Defense Planning Guidance, 1994-1999. which declared “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere…to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

Under George W. Bush the Wolfowitz- Brzezinski Doctrine re-emerged as the Bush Doctrine after 2002 in the run-up to the Iraq war, declaring the use of war as central to US policy to establish the United States as a sole super-power regardless of the level of terrorism required to destroy any sovereign state that stands in its way.

Trump continues the tradition.

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Savvy Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:48 Permalink

Every time I read a comment hear about 'sand niggers' and 'dirty muslims' I can not help but think how conditioned you all are to blame those you drop bombs on year after year.

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PeaceForWorld Fri, 05/18/2018 - 00:57 Permalink

Iraq already sued US for it’s destruction, but they will never see justice. Libyan man sued US for bombing and killing all of his family members. Iran sued US for selling chemical weapons to Iraq during Iran/Iraq war.

But there will be no justice!

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css1971 PeaceForWorld Fri, 05/18/2018 - 04:20 Permalink

There is always justice.

Organised by the state, or otherwise.

All social animals have good memories.

In reply to Iraq already sued US for it… by PeaceForWorld

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quasi_verbatim Fri, 05/18/2018 - 01:40 Permalink

A tiny group of jewhadis did it? That's a new one in the 'Murkican gloom.

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Batman11 Fri, 05/18/2018 - 02:18 Permalink

The rise of fall of nations and empires has been a feature of human history and yet the US is making the same old mistakes, e.g. military over-reach and excessive spending on war.

Sir John Glubb's essay “The Fate Of Empires”

“The Fate Of Empires - A historical study of the empires and civilisations of the past”

http://www.rexresearch.com/glubb/glubb-empire.pdf

The last age is the age of decadence and it’s here.

The tipping point:

“The immense wealth accumulated in the nation dazzles the onlookers. Enough of the ancient virtues of courage, energy and patriotism survive to enable the state successfully to defend its frontiers. But, beneath the surface, greed for money is gradually replacing duty and public service. Indeed the change might be summarised as being from service to selfishness.”

The capacity to learn from history has never been mastered.

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khnum Fri, 05/18/2018 - 04:15 Permalink

There are some times when wars are unavoidable in which case a full disclosure to a nations citizens on what the nation wishes to achieve for itself and the world at large is necessary right or wrong I have not heard such explanations since Ronald Reagan.

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Expat Fri, 05/18/2018 - 05:31 Permalink

Americans are a bunch of whining pussies. You send out your Marines armed with the most advanced weapons and training. You fire cruise missiles from battleships 1000 km away. You drop smart bombs from 50000 feet. You blow the shit out of innocent women and children. You support murderous thugs and train them how to torture and massacre their population.

Then, when these victims dare strike back, such as in 9/11, you cry like little bitches and call THEM terrorists.

Grow a pair, America. And fuck off behind your wall.

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