The End Of An Empire And The Beginning Of A Depression



April 16th, 2011
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Since the end of World War 2, the United States has been the leading military power and the leading economic power on the entire globe. The U.S. has had the largest economy in the history of the world, the U.S. dollar has been used by nearly all of the nations on earth as a reserve currency and the U.S. military has had a physical presence in most of the countries on the planet. Today, the U.S. military is in approximately 130 different nations and it has a total of about 700 military bases around the world. But just like the Roman Empire, the U.S. empire has become overextended and it is starting to decline. Most of our politicians believe that we can continue to "police the world" and project our power to every corner of the globe, but the more we meddle the more the rest of the world hates us and the worse our financial problems get. America is now swamped with debts and our influence is fading. The truth is that what we are witnessing is the end of an empire and the beginning of a depression.

Over the past decade, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost U.S. taxpayers well over a trillion dollars.

So what have we gotten in return for a trillion dollars?

In Afghanistan, we haven't even found the one man we supposedly went there to look for - Osama Bin Laden. It defies comprehension how a man with a really bad kidney disease can hide in caves and evade the most powerful military on earth for nearly a decade.

But at least we got rid of the Taliban and set up a good form of government, right?

Oh yeah, we set up a really wonderful government. For example, they recently arrested a one-legged Afghan Red Cross worker and sentenced him to death for converting to Christianity.

Fortunately there was enough of an international outcry that Said Musa was not hung, but the fact that the Afghan government wanted to string him up is enough to show that we have completely failed over there.

The same thing is true in Iraq. Yeah, we may have gotten rid of Saddam, but the nation is now in far worse shape than before we went in.

Before the war Christians felt safe in Iraq. Now large numbers of them are fleeing Iraq as fast as they can. More than 80 Iraqi Christians were recently beheaded on a single day. All the Christians were trying to do was attend a church service.

Now we are involved in a third war in the Middle East. Even though Libya was no threat to the United States, Obama felt compelled to stick our nose into a chaotic civil war.

Now it looks like our involvement in Libya could last for a very, very long time.

In a joint op-ed piece in the New York Times, Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy declared that NATO military operations in Libya will not end until there is a regime change....

However, so long as Qaddafi is in power, NATO must maintain its operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds. Then a genuine transition from dictatorship to an inclusive constitutional process can really begin, led by a new generation of leaders. In order for that transition to succeed, Qaddafi must go and go for good.
So exactly who are we "helping" in Libya?

It turns out that we are providing "air cover" for many of the same people who were shooting at our troops in Iraq.

Yes, you read the correctly.

According to The Telegraph, the leader of the Libyan rebels is even admitting that his "troops" include jihadists that were firing bullets at U.S. troops in Iraq....

Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
What type of government do you think they are going to set up once this is over?

And all of this meddling is turning the rest of the world against us in a big way.

Most Americans don't realize just how much hatred there is for America in the rest of the world. There are millions upon millions of people out there that now hate us with every fiber of their beings, and every time we bomb someone else world opinion turns against us even more.

Sadly, our meddling goes well beyond the three wars we are currently fighting. The truth is that the U.S. military is actively "conducting operations" in dozens of different countries.

For example, most Americans don't even realize what the U.S. is doing in Pakistan.

How would you like it if a foreign power was conducting missile attacks inside the United States over the objections of our national leaders?

Well, that is what we are doing in Pakistan and we are going to continue even though Pakistani officials are adamantly objecting.

According to AFP, the CIA intends to continue conducting operations in Pakistan no matter what the Pakistani government says....

The Central Intelligence Agency has no plans to suspend "operations" in Pakistan against terror suspects despite objections from leaders in Islamabad, a US official said Thursday.
This approach to foreign policy is absolutely foolish. Attempting to have an "iron grip" on the rest of the world is only going to cause the rest of the world to deeply hate us and deeply resent us. We like to think of ourselves as "do gooders" but most of the rest of the world considers us to be tyrannical. Eventually the rest of the world will lash out at us.

In addition, maintaining our vast empire is bankrupting us.

As I have written about previously, U.S. military spending is wildly out of control. The truth is that U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.

The United States already accounts for 46.5% of all military spending in the world. China is next with only 6.6%.

Just one day of the war in Afghanistan costs more money than it took to build the entire Pentagon.

So will reducing military spending solve all of our financial problems?

Of course not.

In fact, if you eliminated every penny of military spending we would still have a gigantic budget deficit.

And that is another reason why our empire is dying.

The United States has the biggest debt problem in the history of the world.

Right now the U.S. government is over 14 trillion dollars in debt. Our debt is increasing by over 2 million dollars every single minute.

Our politicians are running up the national credit card as if there will never be any consequences.

But a very serious day of reckoning is coming, and when it arrives the rest of the world is not going to be in the mood to help us.

It is being projected that by 2021, the U.S. will be paying $1.1 trillion a year just in interest on the national debt.

So how big is a trillion dollars?

Well, if you were alive when Jesus was born and you spent a million dollars every single day since then, you still would not have spent a trillion dollars by now.

Our national debt is now at a tipping point. A recently revised IMF policy paper entitled “An Analysis of U.S. Fiscal and Generational Imbalances: Who Will Pay and How?â€