Dissing the Republic To Save It: A Conversation with Chalmers Johnson: "I think we made a disastrous error in the classic strategic sense when in 1991 we concluded that we “had won the Cold War.” No. We simply didn’t lose it as badly as the Soviets did. We were both caught up in imperial overreach, in weapons industries that came to dominate our societies. We allowed ideologues to capture our Department of Defense and lead us off — in a phrase they like — into a New Rome. We are no longer a status quo power respectful of international law. We became a revisionist power, one fundamentally opposed to the world as it is organized, much like Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, Bolshevik Russia or Maoist China.... It’s an extremely open question if we have crossed our Rubicon and there is no going back.... Bush dropped the mask. He comes out and says we are a New Rome, we don’t need the U.N. or any friends. We now put countries on hit lists. Certainly, if there were some steering committee for an American imperial project, it would consider Bill Clinton a much better imperial president than George W. Bush. It’s always better strategy to not show your hand, to take an indirect approach but to know exactly where you are going.... undoubtedly they bungled things in Iraq, from not using enough troops to misreading the intelligence, and there is more evidence of it every day. But there was never a plan to leave Iraq because there is no intention of leaving Iraq. We are currently building 14 bases there. Dick Cheney can’t imagine giving up that oil. And the military can’t imagine giving up those bases. That’s why they can’t come up with a plan to leave.... The political system alone can no longer save the republic."

Dissing the Republic To Save It: A Conversation with Chalmers Johnson: "I think we made a disastrous error in the classic strategic sense when in 1991 we concluded that we “had won the Cold War.” No. We simply didn’t lose it as badly as the Soviets did. We were both caught up in imperial overreach, in weapons industries that came to dominate our societies. We allowed ideologues to capture our Department of Defense and lead us off — in a phrase they like — into a New Rome. We are no longer a status quo power respectful of international law. We became a revisionist power, one fundamentally opposed to the world as it is organized, much like Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, Bolshevik Russia or Maoist China.... It’s an extremely open question if we have crossed our Rubicon and there is no going back.... Bush dropped the mask. He comes out and says we are a New Rome, we don’t need the U.N. or any friends. We now put countries on hit lists. Certainly, if there were some steering committee for an American imperial project, it would consider Bill Clinton a much better imperial president than George W. Bush. It’s always better strategy to not show your hand, to take an indirect approach but to know exactly where you are going.... undoubtedly they bungled things in Iraq, from not using enough troops to misreading the intelligence, and there is more evidence of it every day. But there was never a plan to leave Iraq because there is no intention of leaving Iraq. We are currently building 14 bases there. Dick Cheney can’t imagine giving up that oil. And the military can’t imagine giving up those bases. That’s why they can’t come up with a plan to leave.... The political system alone can no longer save the republic."