An eloquent rant

OK so I'm being cheap these days by not posting anything original...But there's still a purpose, I promise. The purpose here is to be relieved that some people out there are able to acknowledge and express concern for the negativity, suffering and global dislike that America has left in its wake for the past 7 years. It is crucial that we all understand that the role of the US as an empire - in every sense of the word - is where the roots of our current problems lay, and it only takes a lunatic like Bush to exploit them. This excerpt is from an article by James Carrol in the Boston Globe:

"Why should you not be demoralized and depressed? But the sorrow of war goes deeper than the mistaken policies of a stubborn president. Next to Bao Ninh's book on your shelf stands "The Sorrows of Empire" by Chalmers Johnson. That title suggests how far into the bones of your nation the pins of the problem are sunk. In effect, the disastrous American War in Iraq is the text, while America's militarized way of being in the world is the context. Armed power at the service of US economic sway has made a putative enemy of a vast population around the globe, and that enemy's vangard are the terrorists. Violent opposition to the American agenda increases with each surge from Washington, whatever its character. Both text and context reveal that every dream of empire brings sorrow, obviously so to the victims of imperial violence, but also to the imperial dreamers, whether or not they consciously associate with what is being done in their name.

But the world sorrow implies more than grief and loss. The palpable sadness of a people reluctantly at war can push toward a fuller moral reckoning with the condition of a nation that has made its own economic supremacy an absolute value. To take on the question of an economy advanced with little regard for its sustainability, much less for justice, implies a move away from the focus on Bush's venality to a broader responsibolity. How do the sorrows of war and empire implicate you?

The simplest truth is that the economic system that so benefits you is steadily eroding democracy by transferring the power to shape the future, both within states and among them, to ever smaller elites. At the same time, wealth multiplies and conentrates itself, while impoverishing more and more human beings. Everything from US oil consumption, to global trade structures, to the iron law of cheap labor, to immigration policies, to the psychology of the gated community, to the gated idea of national sovereignty, to the distractioons of celebrity culture - all of this supports what is called the American way fo life. Yours. If finally seen to be the source of multiple sorrows at home and abroad, can this way of life prompt a depper confrontation with its true costs and consequences? You need nto reduce social ills to personal morality - or let Bush off the hook for his wholly owned war - to acknowledge the complicity attached to mere citizenship in a war-making, imperial nation. In that case, can you measure your sorrow against the word's other meaning, which is contrition?"