Hiding An Empire

I EITHER AVOID DISCUSSIONS of controversial topics with people with whom I strongly disagree, or I severely truncate them, to reduce conflict. Writing and publishing essays on your own website is an excellent way of getting your point of view "out there", making your thoughts available to others without forcing them on folks. Religion and politics come to mind. There was a time, however, when I was less reticent, and possibly a bit less wise. I recall some of the conversations I have had in the past with people whose opinions differed greatly from mine. I remain amused and appalled at some of the arguments they used. On one occasion, I was holding forth on the topic of American foreign policy, expressing my opinion that the United States maintains far too many military bases scattered around the world (over eight hundred), and that American foreign policy has been far too concerned with making the world safe for American corporate capitalism, for gaining access to foreign markets and foreign natural resources. I further opined that the United States has predicated its foreign diplomacy upon the false notion that "the American way" is the best way for other nations. I further complained that the United States has tended to impose its will on other countries by force, coercion, and subversion, particularly in Latin America, and that this has been going on for far too long, well over a century, ever since the United States began to acquire its overseas empire. The response of the other members of the group discussion astounded and dismayed me. "What empire"? was their response. That may have been the moment when I began to learn nmy lesson, began to change my attitude about discussing key issues. What empire? Excuse me? Hundred of military bases on foreign soil, possessions in the Caribbean, south pacific, and Alaska don't count? Incredibly, most American do not realize that Puerto Rico is an American possessions, do not think of the United States as an "empire", and never have. In a fascinating new book, 'How To Hide An Empire" Daniel Immerwahr addresses this peculiar state of affairs. Historians, but not Americans in general, have always been aware that from its beginning, the United States has been an expansionist enterprise, and that its expansion jumped across oceans in the very late nineteenth century, when the continental United States had been locked down tight as American property, and the expanding nation had run out of room to further expand. To facilitate empire, the trumped up war with Spain in 1898 facilitated the acquisition of Spain's former empire, including Cuba, the Phillipines, and Puerto Rico. Immerwahr details, on a geographical basis, the exact process by which the American empire expanded overseas, and how its policies towards conquered peoples have included and still include torture, enslavement, starvation, and scientific experimentation, as well as other forms of exploitation. American imperialist history is not pretty. No wonder most American prefer to deny it. when he was Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld made no bones about it, when he firmly asserted that the United States of America is not an imperialist country, and never has been, even while the American Air force was bombing Baghdad and American ground forces were occupying Afghanistan. Rumsfeld's amazing ability to ignore reality compared quite favorably with my former conversation partners, both of which serve as impressive monuments to our uniquely American ability to live in in a complete state of denial, in a fantasy land we well might call the United States of Imagination.