Quotes for All
None of the people’s wars of the sixties did very well, including the one in Vietnam. Vo Nguyen Giap himself has admitted a loss of 600,000 men between 1965 and 1968…Moreover, by about 1970 at least 80% of the day-to-day combat in South Vietnam was being carried on by regular NVA troops…Genuine black-pajama southern guerrillas … Read more
The ‘defense’ budget is three quarters of a trillion dollars. Profits went up last year well over 25%. I guarantee you: when war becomes that profitable, we’re going to see more of it. Chalmers Johnson
History teaches us that the capacity for things to get worse is limitless. Chalmers Johnson
Although most Americans may be largely ignorant of what was, and still is, being done in their names, all are likely to pay a steep price-individua lly and collectively-fo r their nation’s continued efforts to dominate the global scene. Chalmers Johnson
The demise of the American empire will be no more regretted than the demise of the Soviet empire. Chalmers Johnson
Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens. Chalmers Johnson
Blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows. Chalmers Johnson
Imperial politics represents the conquest of domestic politics and the latter’s conversion into a crucial element of inverted totalitarianism. It makes no sense to ask how the democratic citizen could ‘participate’ substantively in imperial politics; hence it is not surprising that the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates. No major politician or party … Read more
A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, like the old Roman Republic, it will lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship. Chalmers Johnson
The term blowback, which officials of the Central Intelligent Agency first invented for their own internal use, . . . refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign act of terrorists or drug lords or rogue states or illegal arms … Read more