... there is a two-way relation between 9/11 and this empire. On the one hand, understanding the ideas driving the present phase of US empire-building enables us to understand why 9/11 occurred. On the other hand, 9/11 serves as a revelation of the nature of the American empire---an empire that has been in the making, on a bipartisan basis, for a long time. 9/11 reveals the nature of the values that have underlay this empire-building project for over a century, especially the past 60 years.
Evil Empire?
If so, then we must ask whether the term \"evil,\" which US leaders have used so freely to describe other nations, must be applied to our own. There can be no doubt about the application of this term to 9/11. We can here quote President Bush himself, who on the evening of 9/11 said: \"\"Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. . . . Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature.\"80 No explanation of why the attacks were despicable was necessary. The proposition was self-evident. This proposition is even more self-evident, of course, if the attacks were orchestrated by our own government.
Accordingly, if we accept 9/11 as a revelation of the American empire---of the basic values it embodies---must we not conclude that this empire is itself evil?
This suggestion, of course, runs directly counter to our deeply inculcated self-image, which has embodied the notion of \"American exceptionalism.\"81 According to this view, America is qualitatively different from other countries, hence its empire is qualitatively different from all prior empires. Americans in the 19th century said that whereas other empires were self-seeking, greedy, and brutal, the United States had an \"empire of liberty,\" an \"empire of right.\"82
Neoconservatives have recently revived this idea. According to Ben Wattenberg, \"The American empire is not like earlier European imperialisms. We have sought neither wealth nor territory. Ours is an imperium of values.\"83 Robert Kagan calls the United States \"The Benevolent Empire.\"84 Dinesh D\'Souza describe America \"the most magnanimous imperial power ever.\"85 Max Boot says: \"America isn\'t like the empires of old. It does not seek to enslave other peoples and steal their lands. It spreads freedom and opportunity.\"86 Charles Krauthammer says that America\'s claim to being a benign power is verified by its \"track record.\"87
But many other commentators, who base their views on an actual examination of this track record, have come to opposite conclusions. Andrew Bacevich, in his book American Empire, rejects the claim \"that the promotion of peace, democracy, and human rights . . . --not the pursuit of self-interest--[has] defined the essence of American diplomacy.\" Against those who justify American interventions on the grounds that America\'s foreign policy is to promote democracy, Bacevich points out that in previous countries in which America has intervened, \"democracy [did not] flower as a result.\"88
Many other intellectuals have similar views. Chalmers Johnson, who like Bacevich was once a conservative who believed that American foreign policy aimed at promoting freedom and democracy, now describes the United States as \"a military juggernaut intent on world domination.\"89 A recent book by Noam Chomsky is subtitled America\'s Quest for Global Dominance.90 Richard Falk has written of the Bush administration\'s \"global domination project,\" which poses the threat of \"global fascism.\"91
Bacevich sums up the nature of the American empire by employing the statement, made in 1939 by the famous historian Charles Beard, that \"America is not to be Rome.\"92 In the 1990s, Bacevich says, most Americans \"still comforted themselves with the belief that as the sole superpower the United States was nothing like Rome.\" But, he says: \"The reality that Beard feared has come to pass: like it or not, America today is Rome.\"93
This comparison is helpful. To begin answering the question how those of us who are Christians should respond to the realization that we are living in the new Rome, we can ask how Jesus responded to the original Rome.
--- Jesus and the Roman Empire
--- America as the New Rome
--- Christians and the New Rome
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