Lately I've been thinking a lot about that statement. In school we are taught history so that we can understand how the world came to be how it is - or at least that is part of the thought behind teaching history. However, as more time passes, it seems that the teaching of history becomes more abridged - after all, there are only so many hours in a school day that can be devoted to a single subject.
The other night I was watching Real Time with Bill Maher and he touched on something that has been rolling around in my head lately and that is the thought of the late "empires." According to wikipedia, an empire can be defined in two ways. One being that "politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples (ethnic groups) united and ruled either by a monarch (emperor, empress) or an oligarchy," (which I deem as the more traditional definition) and the other states that "etymologically, the political usage of empire denotes a strong, centrally-controlled nation-state, but in the looser vernacular usage, it can denote a large-scale business enterprise (i.e. a transnational corporation) and a political organisation of either national-, regional- or city scale, controlled either by a person (a political boss) or a group authority (political bosses)." The one common thing about all empires you study in history is eventually, they fall. This concerns me.
According to information I've read, we have military bases in about 63 countries and "that the US operates and/or controls between 700 and 800 military bases Worldwide."[1] Given today's loose use of words, that may or may not mean that we have that many but that we have at least one person assisting or controlling bases for another country. To be fair though, one has to consider how many bases other countries have like the British, French, German and Italian. Though the number, location and purpose of bases is obviously a hard one to pinpoint given the nature of what they do, initial research lead me to the conclusion (and many sites had the same opinion) that the US has the most bases worldwide. So why do I care?
The truth is, while the number of bases is shocking, their existence is not necessarily what I have a problem with. I can't begin to comprehend what I deem to be the realities that a country's leadership has to deal with and I acknowledge that they can't always tell us every little detail because it would take so much back end information to get us up to speed that there just isn't time to do it all. Let's face it, as a country, we tend to like our information in 140 word increments and education has not been a priority. That being said, if we are going to occupy a country, it is our leaderships responsibility to outline clear and direct reasons and objectives for us to do so. Bringing this all back to my slowly developing point though, at what point are we stepping back and looking at the bigger picture?
I once read somewhere that "what we perceive, we believe" and the one powerful lesson I've learned in my 16 years in corporate life is the power of perception. The government hires PR strategists and speech writers to help communicate with the public and in effect, shape public perception. Historically, that task seemed easier to do or perhaps there were just more talented people at the helm. Now when I turn on the television and flip through the hundreds of channels available to us, read the paper, browse the Internet, all I hear is noise. I know that they're saying something but honestly to me they look like old white haired men with red faces and raised blood pressure yelling about something and blaming the other party. But back to my point about perception. Right now we are in several wars and what is needed in wars...military bases. The latest "assist" or whatever we're calling our involvement in Libya these days is suspect. Yes, I support efforts to protect human rights but let's call this what it is - another war about oil. The fact that countries are using human rights as a cover for going in is about as useless as a sock in a snowstorm. Another brewing "conflict", another need for more military and another drain on an already struggling economy. I don't know about anyone else, but my perception of our involvement isn't because human rights is our number one concern - if that was so, we would have intervened in the horrific genocide that was going on in Africa - it's because we have oil on the brain. It's like the first words you hear from the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz as he quietly squeaks "oil.....oil."
If I look back to when this all started on the downward slope, I could choose to pinpoint 9/11. Obviously that changed our countries history forever. I won't pretend to be an expert on military strategies but I do have to quietly ponder this question. Our "enemy", Al Qadea, did a horrific thing in flying our airplanes into the World Trade Center. All emotions and political views aside, this group was a small group (compared to our world military groups) that has continued to wreak havoc. How do you bring down Empires? Not by launching nuclear weapons but by chipping away at their resources, running them ragged and keeping it simple. In turn, leaders of the country run around spending money trying to fight the enemy and protect whatever they believe needs protecting while the welfare of their own people start to suffer. Those people, seeing a leadership that does not take care of them but instead spends all of their hard earned money fighting for some distant reason that seems irrelevant to them then turn against their own leadership thus creating a disease from within. Now you have civil war or unrest on top of worldwide occupation - a country simply cannot withstand this. This is not rocket science.
If we are a world economy these days - which we are - why are we not working together in a more cohesive unit with the UN? Isn't this one of the reasons to create a UN organization? When a small group of radical extremists (or whatever we're calling them today) is crossing borders and affecting multiple countries, shouldn't we strategically work together to deal with this issue? Or, in a situation like this, does a perception arise - a perception that says we only care about controlling one thing - oil.
Perhaps I'm just not seeing the bigger picture, after all, this posting is just a venting for my frustration. I'm frustrated that our government is mirroring our selfish corporations that care only about profits and expansion rather than producing quality goods at a reasonable cost to provide them with reasonable profits. There is so much noise coming from our government between the Democrats and Republicans fighting, health care chaos, bailouts with no repercussions, budget cuts, military action and guess what, we're going to be going through another election soon so the noise and the finger pointing are going to get louder and more obnoxious. Does anyone think that we are still listening or that we believe anyone?! I'd like to hear one honest voice whispering a consistent message - that is the voice I would listen to. Show me someone with integrity and honesty that can communicate well....PLEASE!
So are we bound to repeat what history has taught us? The stage may be different but the plot is the same. I can't help but wonder what our founding fathers would say about us if they were brought back to life to live here for even just a month...or are they already rolling over in their graves? Am I alone in wondering this? Am I so uninformed that I'm wasting my energy on thinking about this or are we moving so fast that we're not being thoughfully strategic? There is so much noise out there that rather than trying to make sense of it, are we all just saying "I give up" and letting our politicians battle it out as we eat our take out and watch reruns of "Two and a Half Men" because afterall, if it's not affecting me, why should I care what is happening in some foriegn country? Regarless of the answers, it's disheartening to feel this way. I'd like to think that we have learned from history but right now it seems like we have not.
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