The American Empire:
How Long, How Long?

by Joel Fluker, Washington Editor

I give the American Empire one decade, two max. Why? It goes like this:

The 20^th century for all its strutting was historically short-changed, getting a late start (1914) and ending early (1989). Short, but busy busy busy, consumed as it was by the Seventy-five Years’ War.

With the fall of everything in 1989, the 21^st century got a running start on itself, boosted in the 90s by the short-lived irrational exuberance of the unexpected "peace dividend" which coincided nicely with the Gadgets-Galore Decade (technology and all that).

Not quite everything had fallen in 1989, as we learned to our dismay on September 11, 2001. When the 9-11 dust finally settled, it was clear that talk of "the last remaining Superpower" was incredibly old hat. What we were actually looking at and inhabiting at that terrible moment was the birth of the American Empire.

Scholars may quibble about whether the good ol’ AE started in 1989 or in 2001. (Those who’ll argue any position to get tenure we shall always have with us.) The fact is, the hoary ghost of imperial glory’s back, and America’s got it.

The irony is, the Marxist dream may’ve died in 1989, but so did the American experiment. We just didn’t know it yet. It took 9-11 to bring us to our fledgling imperial senses.

Sure, before 9-11 people were talking about "the end of history" and a "pax Americana." Now we can see: It wasn’t the end of history but the end of America. The end after 200 years of that feisty, grinning do-gooder scurrying around settling arguments and then rushing back home to make more widgets to sell to the former arguers.

Suddenly, in a world without borders we were faced with different feisty, scowling do-gooders whose idea of doing good included using airliners as missiles and writing poison-pen letters that were really poison.

Who was left to deal with this mess? Nobody but the same guys who brought the world Coca-Cola, Mickey Mouse, and Crest toothpaste. The same guys who made the world safe for Kuwait and hoped strongly to make it safe for Jesus. Not the real Jesus, you understand, but the pastel-colored Jesus depicted on Sunday School fans who hates queers, socialists, and uppity women and who hasn’t really decided yet what to do with pigment-enhanced [read: non-white] persons.

Yes, to these blindered American males fell the task of empire. No doubt they are no worse than previous masters of empire in Great Britain, India, China, Rome, and elsewhere.

But one of the big differences now is that these guys are on TV 24-7. Their make-up people are constantly on-call, and their spinners and handlers know no rest.

Clever? Sure. Articulate? For the most part, yes.

Can these re-born imperialist Yankees pull it off? Not just running hither and yon to put out brush fires big and small and then hieing themselves home to Fortress America, but now forced to 24-7-365 hands-on MANAGEMENT OF THE WHOLE EFFING WORLD???

Nuts-and-bolts-wise, the answer is surely yes. Considering the level of MBA smarts these guys have, they certainly THINK they can manage just about anything, their final exam having been to see whether they could steal a presidential election in full view of world media.

Who can doubt that the nifty way they went and made Afghanistan safe for Hamid Karzai bodes well for their managerial future? (The fact that Osama, Mr. Bad Boy himself, eluded them, and the fact that the opium poppies are again growing bigtime are nettlesome problems but we’ll leave that for the future.)

No, the problems of practical management long ago succumbed to American wiles and willfulness. (The Manhattan Project was pretty impressive; the Apollo Program still takes your breath away when you examine it closely; and Wal-Mart, whatever its humane and humanitarian shortcomings, is awesome in its cold, diamond-like, profit-driven purity of management.)

The hidden hitch here, which nobody’s noticed because it’s still such early days American-Empire-wise, is this. Yes, Americans are incorrigible do-gooders; show an American an underdog and the American reflexively starts helping. And yes, Americans are clever do-gooders (that old Yankee know-how).

Two hundred years of success in do-gooding have proved to us that we’re on the right path because look at the trillion-dollar market value of the results of our do-gooding. God, at least the laissez-fair God, is definitely on our side.

But. As powerful as our urge to do good is, as unstoppable as our attendant greed, there is another even more powerful aspect of American character:

Whatever else may come, we want to be liked.

Oops.

Somebody on September 11, 2001, didn’t like us a whole lot and they showed their dislike on world-wide TV.

Now we have the early-days American Imperialists scowling and scolding, threatening and theologizing all over the place, dividing the world into Good and Evil, us against them, with us or against us.

These beginner imperialists have run hard up against the terrible, basic reality of empire:

You can rule ‘em but you can’t make ‘em like you.

Everybody before us has learned that lesson the hard way. The Brits learned it in Asia. The French learned it in Africa. The Romans learned it all around the Mediterranean. And these hardly dry behind the ears American imperialists are already learning it.

What’ll happen?

Probably what’ll happen is the world’s shortest-lived empire. The White House and Pentagon MBA’s will try try try. But whatever military successes they may have, again and again they’re going to wind up with egg and falafels and rice on their faces, bending the world to their simplistic Yankee will, but then day after day, year after year, having to live with vast dislike, seasoned with ineradicable pockets of sheer hatred.

Us? Hated?

No way.

Better to retreat. With a new appreciation for Kipling they’ll say, "Let the little bastards with skin problems eat Big Macs and speak English and learn to LOVE us, or we’ll just go home and live behind our big bi-oceanic moat."