The American empire is probably going to last more than 10-20 years, unless the US does so badly in Iraq that it can only win with a draft. If a draft is imposed the most likely result is that it will cause a national revolt which will force the US to reduce its troops in Iraq, end the draft, and rely on EU & other nations troops to suppress the insurgency. That would be the beginning of the end of the American empire, since it would have to reach a power sharing agreement with other nations, leading to a sort of mult-national imperialism. Similar to how Greece '47 signaled the end of the British empire. It's possible that the crisis caused by the draft could cause the union to break up, but that would probably require a very large revolt that could not be pacified by the national government even by ending the draft. If that happens the states won't separate economically, they'll only separate politically. Some sort of "free trade area" and transnational authority could be used to achieve that. That will probably be the rule of thumb across the globe after the end of the empire; the global economy is too integrated for it to be in the interests of multinational corporations to split the world up into multiple competing empires. Barring revolution, it'll be the reign of free trade agreements and WTO or EU like authorities.
Hussein is dead. He got what he deserved, even though he clearly didn't have anything near a fair trial. Hussein's US backers get off scott free, of course. See Juan Cole's
Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein. US corporate media mostly skirted around the fact that the US was supporting Hussein during the crime he was convicted of and continued to support him for years afterward. The media's treatment of this enemy leader's crimes can be contrasted with its treatment of a recently deceased US leader, Gerald Ford. Ford was a mass murderer. He backed Indonesia's invasion and occupation of East Timor, during which Indonesia murdered around 1/3rd of East Timor's population. At the time US media gave little coverage to the occupation and even less to US support of it. As atrocities increased coverage decreased until it reach zero at the worst point. In the obsequious coverage of Ford following his death none of the media have seen fit to acknowledge this fact, in contrast to the emphasis on Hussein's crimes. Enemy crimes are frontpage news, while US crimes are mostly downplayed or ignored.
The US government's
investigation has cleared itself of a massacre in Ishaqi. Which is not surprising, they are investigating themselves after all obviously they're going to either whitewash their wrong doing ("it was just some rogue soldiers, honest") or deny wrongdoing entirely. We don't allow the mafia to investigate itself, so why should we allow the government to investigate itself? Obviously such investigations are not at all credible.
CU-Boulder's show investigation into
Ward Churchill has finished, coming up with the expected verdict: accusing Churchill of academic fraud & so on. The whole thing is illegitimate because it's really motivated by Churchill's politics, not any "academic fraud." These allegations were all made years ago, yet there was no investigation of them until the flair up over his political writings about 9-11. Had there not been the furor over his politics, there would be no investigation of these allegations of "academic fraud." The investigation is, in essence, punishment for holding the wrong political views. All this talk about “academic fraud” and Churchill’s ethnicity is a red herring. They can’t fire him for his political beliefs but, theoretically, they could fire him for academic fraud or for lying about his ethnicity. However, the real reason for the drive to fire Churchill is his political beliefs; these are just excuses conjured up to justify firing him and are therefore illegitimate. The report's defense is:
"The Committee notes that this investigation was only commenced after, and perhaps in response to, the public attack on Professor Churchill for his controversial publications. Some of the allegations sent to the Committee related to events that apparently had been well known by scholars in the field, although perhaps not by responsible University personnel, for years before the University took any action whatsoever concerning them, and it did so only after the controversy over Professor Churchill’s essays became national news. For example, Professor John LaVelle had first published the claims that form the basis for Allegation A discussed below in a book review in 1996; he further elaborated on them in a larger article published in 1999. That allegation, therefore, dates back almost a decade before these charges were initiated. At least one other claim was brought to the attention of responsible University officials a decade ago, but the University, after preliminary investigation, decided to take no further action. Thus, the Committee is troubled by the origins of, and skeptical concerning the motives for, the current investigation. The Committee’s disquiet regarding the timing of these allegations is exacerbated by the fact that the formal complainant in the charges before us is the Interim Chancellor of the University, despite the express provision in the Laws of the Board of Regents of the University of Colorado that faculty members’ “efforts should not be subjected to direct or indirect pressures or interference from within the university, and the university will resist to the utmost such pressures or interference when exerted from without.”
Nevertheless, serious claims of academic misconduct have been lodged and they require full investigation and responsible and fair treatment. The Committee has attempted to provide that investigation, keeping the background and origins of this particular dispute out of our consideration of the particular allegations. To use an analogy, a motorist who is stopped and ticketed for speeding because the police officer was offended by the contents of her bumper sticker, and who otherwise would have been sent away with a warning, is still guilty of speeding, even if the officer’s motive for punishing the speeder was the offense taken to the speeder’s exercise of her right to free speech. No court would consider the improper motive of the police officer to constitute a defense to speeding, however protected by legal free speech guarantees the contents of the bumper sticker might be."The flaw in their claim is that it amounts to a defacto suppression of free speech. It doesn't really matter how the courts rule, the fact is it punishes individuals for holding views the state does not approve of. When the state punishes people for holding views it doesn't like that's a violation of free speech. The fact that the state is using allegations of misconduct as a front to suppress free speech doesn't change that fact. Most modern violations of free speech, even by outright dictatorships, is not done by explicitly suppressing free speech rights but by inventing some pretext to punish dissidents. Officially, they're not punishing dissidents for holding the wrong views, they're punishing dissidents for terrorism, or fraud, or being a spy or a communist or a fascist or some other trumped up charge. If the charge happens to be true, that's much better because it'll stick better - but even in those cases the actual motivation is their dissident views, not the alleged wrongdoing. Even Stalin had his show trials - the fact that he invented pretexts to whack his enemies doesn't change the fact that they're really about suppressing opposition, not the phony allegations he & his henchmen cooked up.
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