Pffft! That’s for wimp empires! I want the real Assyrian-Mongol-Tartar-Aztec shit! I want pyramids of heads! Flaying-and-impaling! Former cities you could ride across at night without breaking your horse’s leg!
No, of course not, he was just wearing an outfit that military people uniformly wear: http://www.whereistheoutrage.net/wordpress/2008/01/23/
No contradiction. Athens in Pericles’ day was a democracy and an empire – a pure direct democracy internally (slaves, women, I know, shut up), but its network of subject-allies (each required to be a democracy internally) was like one big polis where every citizen was a polis and Athens was the tyrant.
Any resemblance to the current U.S. global network of bases and allies and occupied territories is . . . well, is the subject of this thread.
And of course, even if we stipulate that there is such a thing as an American Empire, and that such an Empire is in decline, so what? What happened to the British Empire or the French Empire? They are now one with Nineveh and Tyre. Except, the Brits and the French are better off now than they ever were. Getting rid of their empires was a net positive. The Brits aren’t crouching in the ruins of their monuments roasting rats on a campfire of oil paintings just because there’s no more British Empire.
So, we get our butts spanked in Iraq and Afghanistan, and come back home chastened, and we stop wasting so much blood and treasure on foreign adventures. And this is a bad thing, why?
No, military people don’t “uniformly” wear flight suits. You’re just wrong. And Bush isn’t president anyway, so it’s irrelevant to what stage of alleged decline we’re in now.
Do the Brits feel that way today, I wonder? This is pure speculation on my part, but I always read the “What have the Romans done for us?!” scene in Life of Brian as reflecting mixed feelings in British society about their imperial heritage – with pride and a sense of being wounded by ingratitude definitely being parts of that mix. Do many Brits lament the passing of the Empire? (I recall a Brit Doper who seemed to think they still have it in some sense, can’t recall his name, haven’t seen him around lately.)
Because there might be other foreign adventurers?
Let’s nuke Caesar this time.
I am depressed cause my fav painting there was the last one, Desolation?
Good corrective to the flawed framework of discussion within which China/US relations are discussed:
The end of the Cold War was analogous to the end of the Punic Wars. We’re now just before the outbreak of the civil wars, as per this great post:
So we no longer fight wars with drafted citizens, we now have soldiers fighting near-perpetual wars on the barbarian frontiers, and we’re talking about giving American citizenship to foreigners who agree to serve in the Army. I’d say we’re now in the era of Gracchus.
- raises hand *
I’m a military person, and I wear several uniforms, one of which is my flight suit. The garment is of standardized – ‘uniform’, if you will – pattern and colour, and includes nationality, rank, qualification, unit, and name markings.
While I don’t wear the flight suit to fancy parades and formal dinners, it is in fact my daily uniform most of the time. And is ordered worn as such.
Now, the original comment may have been intended to draw an allusion to the standard Dictator Kit, and Bush’s flight suit may not have had ranks or badges, but it’s definitely fair to describe a flight suit as a uniform.
Let’s look at the timeline. The Roman Republic was founded in 508 BC. It conquered its immediate surroundings and incorporated that territory into a larger homeland. Then around 280 BC it began to conquer overseas territories and build an “empire”. It officially became a political empire in 27 BC when Republican rule was replaced by dictatorship following a series of civil wars. It came close to collapsing in 234 AD but pulled itself back together. Its original Roman homeland fell in 476 but it had established a new homeland in the east which lasted until 1453.
So how will America compare? Our country was founded in 1776. We’ve conquered our immediate surroundings and build a bigger homeland. We invaded Iraq in 2003 (a year ahead of schedule) and presumedly that’s the beginning of our overseas imperial phase. That means we’ll be due to abandon our republican government and become a real empire around 2256. We’ll have our crisis period around the twenty-sixth century. We’ll start a new homeland, maybe in Australia or Mars, and America will fall to hordes of Canadian barbarians around 2759. But the Neo-American Empire will survive and last until around 3736 when the final bastions of New Washington gets conquered by aliens. But we’ll have had a good run.
We need to have that series of civil wars and a dictator as well. I don’t think that the Republican/Democrat infighting constitutes real ‘civil war’…and GW DEFINITELY does not fit the bill for a dictator.
Also, before we can be invaded by the hordes of Canada don’t we need to conquer most of the country, only to fail to capture and subdue the whole thing due to the trickery of one Canadian trained and equipped by the US war machine?? I, for one, am looking forward to placing our imperial boots on the necks of our Canadian brethren and sistren and will leave it to my distant ancestors to deal with the howling Canadian hordes sometime in the future…
-XT
Don’t. Things work faster in the modern world. Look at the timespan it took the British Empire to rise and fall.
1497 to 1997? That’s a pretty good run I’d say. Granted, they weren’t top dog that whole time. Still, our pitiful 200 years (depending on when you want to mark the start of our ‘empire’) doesn’t seem to compare very well.
-XT
For those who don’t think the US is an empire, what were the invasions of Panama, Grenada and Iraq if not imperialism?
Have we set up imperial like administration of any of those places? Are they being directly controlled by US appointed administrators? Do they pay taxes to the US? Are we directly or indirectly exploiting their resources for our own gain?
What does ‘empire’ mean to you, exactly? What defines an ‘empire’? It seems you mean ‘empire’ to be any country that is a superpower and has a focus other than inward.
Personally, I’d say that the US COULD be an empire, based on how we acquired a lot of our current territory from the Native Americans. But if that’s the case then most countries are ‘empires’ as well, so the term becomes nearly meaningless. Myself, I think ‘empire’ implies an imperial form of government (i.e. a dictator or some sort of monarchy or emperor).
-XT
Sure and I pointed that out.
Rome - founded their country 508 BC - first conquest of a “foreign” colony (Sicily) 280 BC - 228 years
America - founded their country 1776 - first conquest of a “foreign” colony (Iraq) 2003 - 227 years
So like I said, we’re a year ahead of schedule.
Ooh! Ooh! Can I be Canadian Hannibal? 
(We’re still extending the Punic war analogy, right? Or is it the social war?)
I’d say it’s an empire when a country starts establishing its rule over foreign peoples while not making them part of the mother country. So the United States was not forming an empire when it occupied places like Ohio or Oklahoma or Oregon - it was just expanding the size of the original United States. Imperialism would be something like the Canal Zone or the Phillipines or Iraq - places that were ruled by the United States but not part of the United States. The only places like that now are Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and our Pacific territories. So our imperial phase has barely begun - we have centuries of our Imperial Age ahead.
The U.S. empire is declining? Talk about whistling past the graveyard. We’ve spent the last decade adding territory to our direct control and strengthening our existing spheres of influence. We didn’t give up anything of note. Weren’t kicked out of anywhere by mobs with torches and pitchforks. Next we’ll go into a period of consolidation and rebuilding and then we’ll be ready for another round. Where’s a good next target do you suppose? South America is getting awfully uppity…
The Romans would’ve been SHOCKED to learn they were running an empire in their joint. They were just exporting civilization donchaknow.