Endless US Middle East invasions marked the end of Americans as free people. US Empire is first about enslaving Americans. The republic that bound its rulers with the chains of the Constitution and freed the rest of us to live in peace is no more-Justin Raimondo

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Endless US invasions of the Middle East marked the end of Americans as a free people: First published as US began 2003 Iraq invasion: 

March 19, 2003, “Shine, Perishing Republic: Kiss the good old USA good-bye, say hello to the American Empire,” by Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com 

“Can “democracy” take root in the arid soil of the Middle East, forcibly implanted and fertilized with plenty of U.S. tax dollars? To the social engineers of the neoconservative persuasion, who see the world as their laboratory, it is an experiment worth conducting. The threat of terrorism, they maintain, cannot be defeated unless we go in and yank it out by its roots – and plant something else to take its place. Like the Soviets, and all modern tyrants, they are contemptuous of tradition, of the accumulated knowledge and cultural heritage handed down over millennia. They see themselves as revolutionaries, and that they are. But their revolution is not directed primarily against foreign tyrants: for even as they put on a great show of “liberating” foreign peoples, 

they are in the process of enslaving the American people, 

and destroying the remnants of the Constitution. They are worse than mere hypocrites: they are defilers, who pray loudly even as they desecrate the gravestones of their ancestors. 

The era of the American Republic is over, and age of Empire is begun. Where the US once fought wars in self-defense, it now wages wars of outright conquest. Where once we fought to preserve our constitutional form of government, today we must fight to restore it. The difference is that now we are fighting a rearguard action. The enemy is not only within the gates: he has seized our main headquarters, and is now conducting mop-up operations against such pockets of resistance as still persist. The citadel is taken.  

The war on Iraq is going to be short, but the occupation will a task without end, a heavy burden that will be more than just punishment for our vainglorious “victory.” As the self-elected arbiter of every ethnic dispute that arises among the quarrelsome peoples of the Middle East, we are walking into a snake-pit, I fear, without thought of the consequences. 

A future of endless conflicts, perpetual war for perpetual peace, and color-coded terror unto infinity – that is what we have to look forward to…. 

Our old Republic, once the enemy of kings and contemptuous of empires, is now donning the imperial purple…. 

The America we loved is lost, perhaps forever. That is the meaning of this [2003 Iraq] war. The republic that bound its rulers with the chains of the Constitution and freed the rest of us to live in peace is no more.”…


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