print:Imperialism - a note to the good people of the U.S.A.

I am writing this on the day when all patriotic citizens of the United States of America will be present either in person or in spirit in Washington D.C. to protest against the on-going illegal war in Iraq started gratuitously by the Bush r�gime to satisfy its greed for power and money.

Your brave protest, challenging the traitors who are busily stealing the dollars which you have paid in taxes while sacrificing your sons and daughters on the altar of Mr Bush's cruel god (whom I still obstinately call by its old name of Mammon), is a reminder to the world that there are decent and honest folk on the U.S.A. It is also a reminder that far from everyone in your country is an ignorant, greedy and selfish brute, even though most of your own media seem to give that terrifying impression by their sycophantic support for your corrupt and venal rulers.

Your action has made me think about the nature of their behaviour and the manner in which they are attempting to maintain their Empire.

My late father inspired in me a love of history which has proved invaluable in helping me to see through political charlatans, since there are almost always parallels between current events and what has happened in the past.

To take one example, the present Administration in the U.S.A., headed by a puppet rigidly controlled by a tight group of neo-conservative idealogues, has come into power by using methods which we last saw under the late unlamented Adolf Hitler after the First World War. The brilliant propagandists who work for this group have most carefully followed the example of their teacher and hero, Dr Josef Goebbels, in their presentation of lies as facts and in choosing scape-goats upon whom the people are asked to concentrate their fears and their hatred. Hitler chose the Jews and the Bush r�gime has chosen the Arabs and the wider Muslim world. The Jews were chosen because many of them had become prominent and they seemed to be different, and the Arabs (particularly Muslim Arabs) have been chosen because they dare to resist the Bush r�gime's favoured terrorists, the Zionists and they are therefore alleged to be different.

As any honest person who has met any real Jews or any real Arabs (whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish) knows, they are just as ordinary as human beings as any European Christian such as me or as any other person of other ethnic or religious groups. We are faced with the same stupidity as that which animates racism.

However, I am straying from my subject, and I must revert to the matter of Empires and how they arise, survive and fade away.

The Roman Empire spread in a haphazard pragmatic way from its origins in Italy to cover the whole of the Mediterranean basin with extensions as far as the walls built to keep out its enemies in what is now Scotland and far into what are now Germany and some Eastern European nations. It was built up both by straightforward conquest, as in Gaul or in Britain, and by a series of treaties and agreements whereby local rulers became clients or puppets of the Romans, as in Judea or in Egypt. The main aim was, as it ever is with such groupings, to favour trade and economic benefits for the central rulers. The Roman Empire imploded when it became flabby and corrupt, thereby letting in the envious tribes and nations on its borders who eventually over-ran all its territories. Its greatest success was having for centuries imposed the Pax Romana across the whole Empire, even if its methods were far from acceptable to any decent person.

The Neo-con Empire (if I may so call it) has arisen since the Second World War and is based on the concept which its proponents have come to call a Pax Americana, whereby the U.S.A., by brute force, by threats or by guile will impose its will not on a defined region such as the Roman Empire, but on the whole world. The aim is the same as that of the Romans, namely to favour trade and economic benefits for the central rulers, who will have to persuade their subjects at home to bahave as desired in such farces as the elections, which therefore closely resemble the circuses beloved of the Roman mobs.

We therefore have two parallels, firstly the coming to power similar to that of Adolf Hitler, and secondly the maintenance of power and the extension of the Empire in a manner which harks back to the Romans.

Like the Romans, the Neo-con Empire currently has its client or puppet "rulers" in some parts of the world which are subjugated to its over-reaching rule, with classical examples being the government of Mr Anthony Blair in the United Kingdom as well as those whose financial depedency forces them to obey orders, such as Poland, Pakistan, Egypt or Jordan, while at the same time it has much more direct rule over other lands. It is currently uncertain where the real power lies within this Empire, and it may be in the artificial "state of Israel", which has first call on the loyalties of many of those holding power in Washington D.C., or it may perhaps actually be somewhere inside the U.S.A. This site of the real power is irrelevant, since the same people or group of people operate in both places and move around with bewildering and even dizzy frequency.

What seems to surprise so many innocently ignorant people in your country is that other nations around the world resent and reject the claim by the Neo-con Empire to lead the world. We do not hate you as a people, but most of us quite rightly hate your rulers' attempts to subjugate us, whether we be Chinese, Iraqis, Palestinians, Iranians, Indians or Europeans. We follow the ancient Christian precept of hating the sin but loving the sinner - I owe it to you to explain that you can be likened to sinners in so far as any of you have sinned by supporting the tyrants. Those of you who have fought this tyranny are, nevertheless and most unhappily, assimilated to the tyrants in popular perception (in other words, among the ignorant and ill-educated)because the Bush administration finally managed to win an election (however fair and open that may or may not have been)in November 2004. For us, who are your sympathisers on the outside, this is unfair, since the Neo-con tyrants are divided like competing sports teams into Republicans and Democrats with almost identical evil aims and a similar lack of any discernible moral conscience.

Because of your country's present very temporary position as the sole super-power, you alone currently hold the fate of the world in your hands, which is an enormous responsability, and you alone can bring down the present tyranny which is wasting the money which you have paid in taxes by spending huge sums on shoring up its repressive branch office in the "state of Israel" and by spending human lives and money, on behalf of the same branch office, in Iraq, perhaps to be extended to Syria and Iran and elsewhere in the Near and Middle East, with incidental (but substantial) benefits for such entities as Mr Cheney's beloved Haliburton.

We have to retain one happy thought, namely that this Empire will not last for ever, but the longer it lasts the more we shall all suffer from its rapacious ravages, and therefore the sooner it is destroyed the better. As a European, I would be extremely happy to see a return of the United States of America to the international fold as a powerful but peaceful nation working for the common good.

However, for the moment, this particular "Evil Empire" deserves to be resisted on all fronts - internal opposition to it within the U.S.A. is patriotism of the highest calibre, while external opposition is an essential element of the fight by humanity against global terrorism.

Let us all show our opposition to Imperialism with a cry of "Down with the Empire!"

*Robert Thompson is a columnist on Axis of Logic. His writings can be found in Letters from France. He is a French citizen, is a retired Avocat (Trial Lawyer) at the Boulogne-sur-Mer Bar, living with his wife in a small village in Northern France. He was born at Leek (North Staffordshire, England) in 1931, and, after reading Jurisprudence at Oxford University, he became an English Solicitor. He later went to work at the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. There he was Director in charge of the Legal Department and also Secretary General of the Court of Arbitration, the most important international commercial arbitration centre on the world. While there, he became the I.C.C. Director in charge of relations with the Arab states, where he travelled for professional reasons, and he worked towards legal cooperation with the countries then within the Comecon.