Chalmers Johnson: Blowback Is Simply Another Way of Saying That a Nation Reaps What It Sows

Ron and I have been watching the 10 part documentary on Vietnam. Often I am left weeping at the end of each series. And I am struck again and again by what I already know, and yet what remains shocking, and that is how the horrific tragedies of history repeat themselves today and throughout history. I hear the same pervasive propaganda, see the same dehumanization and violence and atrocities, and experience the same dark pull of a toxic nationalism and the Big Money backing of the American Military Industrial Complex that glorifies sending our children off to kill other children in far away lands. What will the documentary look like in 50 years about these times? Can we humans please learn the lessons of war and truly engage in waging peace instead? I have two of Chalmers Johnson's books and have learned so much about the true history and present day policies of our nation from Mr. Johnson and from other amazing resources that embody a courageous and profound commitment to truth. We all need to learn these facts. Only then will we refuse the powers that seek to divide and polarize us and choose a different path individually and collectively. Peace is possible. May we all choose to be this peace our world hungers for. - Molly

As a form of government, imperialism does not seek or require the consent of the governed. It is a pure form of tyranny. The American attempt to combine domestic democracy with such tyrannical control over foreigners is hopelessly contradictory and hypocritical. A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both.

The term blowback, which officials of the Central Intelligent Agency first invented for their own internal use, . . . refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign act of terrorists or drug lords or rogue states or illegal arms merchants often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations.

Imperial politics represents the conquest of domestic politics and the latter's conversion into a crucial element of inverted totalitarianism. It makes no sense to ask how the democratic citizen could 'participate' substantively in imperial politics; hence it is not surprising that the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates. No major politician or party has so much as publicly remarked on the existence of an American empire.

Although most Americans may be largely ignorant of what was, and still is, being done in their names, all are likely to pay a steep price - individually and collectively - for their nation's continued efforts to dominate the global scene.

A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can't be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, like the old Roman Republic, it will lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.

Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens.

Blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows.

- Chalmers Johnson

Chalmers Johnson (August 6, 1931 – November 20, 2010) was an American author and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967 to 1973, and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972. He was also president and co-founder with Steven Clemons of the Japan Policy Research Institute (now based at the University of San Francisco), an organization promoting public education about Japan and Asia. He wrote numerous books including, most recently, three examinations of the consequences of American Empire: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.

Please go here for more information:
http://americanempireproject.com/authors/chalmers-johnson/
https://www.thenation.com/authors/chalmers-johnson/