Empires always march in different clothes and under different banners but the will to dominate is never left behind. The sword and the purse -- violence and bribery -- are the inner workings and plumbing of the imperial enterprise.
Empires always fail for the same reasons: moral debasement of the conquered and conqueror; hatred and contempt by the occupied instead of winning their hearts and minds; and religious adherence to the belief that you can kill your way out of war.
Vietnam’s My Li Massacre, the Napalm Girl, the Phoenix assassination program and puppet dictators were the grisly handiwork of the American empire in Vietnam. Today our imperial infrastructure sports 800 military bases and lily pads in more than 80 foreign countries and territories. The short list includes Germany, Japan, South Korea, Italy, Aruba, Bahrain, Cuba, Djibouti, Estonia, Greece, Honduras, Ireland, Jordan, Kenya, Marshall Islands, Norway, Oman, Philippines, Qatar, Romania, Spain, Tunisia, UK, Virgin Islands, Wake Island, Israel, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Our praetorian special forces are deployed in more than 170 counties. Over the past seven decades, the American military has been sent into 200 countries.
The Committee is conferring its Defender of Liberty Award on three courageous American soldiers who brandished weapons and disbursed dollars in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars of American aggression. They will share their conversions to the ugly truths about empire and public disclosures of what they saw and what they did. They relate how PTSD and spiraling suicides result from the pointlessness and immorality of war not in self-defense and the demoralization of the troops. The three veterans are the tribunes of our salvation by renouncing empire and serve as model citizens in our moribund republic.
Danny Sjursen
Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army officer, director of the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy (CIP), contributing editor at Antiwar.com, and co-hosts the podcast “Fortress on a Hill.” His work has appeared in the NY Times, LA Times, The Nation, The Hill, Salon, The American Conservative, and Mother Jones, among other publications. He served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and taught history at West Point. He is the author of three books, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge, Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War, and most recently A True History of the United States.
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Matthew Hoh
Matthew Hoh is a senior fellow with the Center for International Policy and a member of the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN). He is a 100% disabled Marine combat veteran and, in 2009, he resigned his position with the State Departmenta in Afghanistan in protest of the escalation of the war. Prior to that Matthew was a Marine Corps company commander and Department of Defense official in the Iraq War.
Matthew has written for dozens of print and online publications and has been interviewed on hundreds of tv, radio and web based programs. In 2010, he received the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling. In 2015, Matthew was certified as a peer support specialist for mental health and substance abuse issues.
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Daniel L. Davis
Davis is a member of the board of the Committee for the Republic. He retired from the U.S. Army as a Lt. Col. after 21 years of active service and currently serves as Senior Fellow and Military Expert for Defense Priorities. He was deployed into combat zones four times in his career, beginning with Operation Desert Storm in 1991, and then to Iraq in 2009 and Afghanistan twice (2005, 2011). He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for Valor at the Battle of 73 Easting in 1991, and awarded a Bronze Star Medal in Afghanistan in 2011.
Davis gained some national notoriety in 2012 when he returned from Afghanistan and published a report detailing how senior U.S. military and civilian leaders told the American public and Congress the war was going well while in reality it was headed to defeat. Events since have confirmed his analysis was correct.
Davis is the author of The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America, available on Amazon. His work on defense, foreign affairs, and social issues has been published in the Washington Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Newsweek, CNN, Fox News, The Guardian (UK), U.S. News & World Report, TIME, Politico, and other publications. Davis was also the recipient of the 2012 Ridenhour Prize for Truth-telling. He is a frequent guest on Fox News, Fox Business News, BBC, CNN, and other television networks.
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5 окт 2024
