From Draft NOtices, April-June 2007
A Review of Chalmers Johnson’s book Nemesis: the Last Days of the American Republic | Buy Book
—Glen Motil
The bloody iron curtain of American Military Power
Is a mirror image of Russia’s red Babel-Tower.
— Allen Ginsberg, from the song/poem “Capitol Air,” Plutonian Ode
Nemesis . . . deals with the way arrogant and misguided American policies have headed us for a series of catastrophes comparable to our disgrace and defeat in Vietnam or even the sort of extinction that befell our former fellow “superpower.”
— Chalmers Johnson
Chalmers Johnson, a UCSD professor emeritus, was formerly a self-described “cold warrior” in academia and viewed the Soviet Union as a “menace.” In light of his past, he often quotes economist John Maynard Keynes when asked how he has become such a stalwart critic of the U.S. military-industrial complex and a prominent voice for the CIA abolitionist movement: “When my information changes, I change my opinion. What do you do?”
Unfortunately, far too few people employ such a thought process, including the majority of America’s elected representatives. Johnson’s new book, Nemesis: the Last Days of the American Republic, is the completion of a trilogy. It follows Blowback, which was written before the events of 9/11 and provides evidence and speculation on how U.S. “covert policies abroad might be coming back to haunt us,” and Sorrows of Empire, which served to “analyze the nature of this militarism and to expose the harm it was doing, not to others but to our own society and governmental system.”
Nemesis is by far the best of the three. Each chapter causes us to stare deeper into the abyss of our own making. Each chapter is worth the price of the book and more. The endnotes provide a treasure trove of useful information, and the bibliography is invaluable for the intellectual arsenal counter-militarists must possess. If you’ve been closely following the existential journey of geopolitical events over the past decade, the endnotes compile in one place the treacherous landmines we have endured, the ideological projectiles we have managed to dodge, and rocky, embattled legal terrain we have tread.
The book instantly challenges readers to question our perspective. In the prologue, Johnson argues persuasively that “Americans cannot truly appreciate the impact of our bases elsewhere because there are no foreign military bases within the United States.” U.S. bases bring with them brothels, brawls, sex crimes, racial and religious insults, and environmental pollution; these “global garrisons provide that threat and are a cause of blowback.”
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