the sun sets on the empire

It wasn't very long ago that American wars were fought by American soldiers and sailors, but not any more. A new book by Jeremy Scahill reveals the extent of involvement and details the specific activities of the Blackwater Corporation and its fascist warlord/Christian crusader honcho, Erik Prince in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It's a sobering story, and one that convinces me that the Evil Empire of the Pentagon is on its last legs.

Blackwater is far from being the only corporation providing mercenaries and hardware in the war-for-oil effort; it's just the most high-profile of the bunch. Even such mundane duties as KP and driving trucks are seldom done by armed services personnel any more; the petro wars are being fought on contract, and also by local auxiliaries, who take on an increasingly important role as these perpetual conflicts wind toward the end of their first decade.

Edward Gibbon, in his great and famous history of the decline and collapse of Rome, notes that "That public virtue" called "patriotism is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members." And as lately as the Desert Storm campaign of the early nineties, American military action was almost exclusively undertaken by just such citizen-soldiers as Gibbon describes. So Iraq, now largely a mercenary operation, and Afghanistan, where much of the burden of war is borne by either contractors or mercenary auxiliaries, are radical departures from our recent past.

Gibbon also adds that "Such a sentiment (patriotism), which had rendered the legions of the (Roman) republic almost invincible, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary servants of a despotic prince, and it becomes necessary to supply that defect by other motives..." Chief among these "other motives" of course is hard cash, and recently the American command in Afghanistan were shocked to discover that they were having serious difficulties with local recruiting because they were being outbid by the Taliban.

They're not only being outbid, but out-thought as well. Sometimes I think the current American policy in Afghanistan was thought up by Mullah Omar, and then planted inside the U.S. command structure by double agents before being conveyed to the White House. Omar seems quite confident that the easiest way to total victory for the Taliban in Afghanistan is to manipulate the American Emperor into sending 30,000 or so more troops, to get the Americans to pour billions more down a bottomless well and subsidize the opium trade in the process, and to turn a few psychotic Christ-cultists and professional Muslim haters like Erik Prince loose among the Afghan population.

"I've got this pitiful, helpless giant* right where I want him," gloats the sinister Talibanister.

And the saddest part is, Emperor Publius Assholius Obaminus doesn't even know he's been punked by the Mullah. Such is the fate of doomed empires.

*The phrase was first used by President Richard M. Nixon in the early 70's to describe the U.S. in Vietnam.

Pictured: portrait bust of Emperor Marcus Julius Philippus, better known as Philip the Arab, who seized power in 244 CE and was assassinated in 249 after falling victim to a military coup. I'm struck by his resemblance to Barack Obama.