U.S. borrows practices from Roman empire

The corporate and political elites who govern the American empire seem to have borrowed another practice from the Roman empire.

The passage from the American republic to the American empire started with the vast expansion of presidential and military power during the Cold War and has progressed to the point where President Barack Obama now asserts the right to assassinate any person (and that includes any American citizen) anywhere in the world whom he judges to be a terrorist. He also claims the right to bomb any country in the world without congressional authorization if he doesn't feel that the government of that country is acting in a humanitarian manner.

Another policy our elites are borrowing from the ancient Romans is to satisfy their need for imperialist cannon fodder by adding foreign auxiliaries to our armed forces. This practice received a big boost when Gen. David Petraeus (who is about to become the director of the CIA) hired Sunni tribes in Iraq to supplement the Shia military forces there whom we were already financing. Afghanistan is also awash with Karzai's mercenaries paid for by the U.S. government.

But consider what happened in the Roman case. The auxiliaries and mercenaries whom the Romans hired to police their border regions were the Germanic tribes who later overran the entire Roman empire and busted it up.

History always provides an answer, although it is sometimes one that elites have not anticipated.

Harold Nelson

Vinton