CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Time for a Declaration of Moral Independence from Empire

On the 250th year since U.S. independence was declared, many are thinking of new forms of independence. This piece proposes a Declaration of Moral Independence from Empire, naming empire as the enemy and the fundamental struggle as moral. It leave open the possibilities for different political outcomes, including a post-imperial U.S. and autonomy of bioregions and states, either in confederation or fully independent.

The reality of empire

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Position the imperial death star, commands the demented emperor.

Fortunately, Trump almost immediately did a TACO from his April 7 message, pulling back with announcement of a two-week ceasefire with Iran. No doubt, the implications of an apocalyptic attack on that nation would have been destruction of much Persian Gulf oil and gas infrastructure. It would have disrupted supplies for months and years in a way even more devastating that the current Hormuz bottleneck.

Trump’s words recall that famous statement by George Lucas to fellow director James Cameron that when he conceived the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars, he had the Viet Cong in mind. If the Rebel Alliance was the Viet Cong, who was the Evil Empire?

In the 60s and 70s, the U.S. mercilessly bombed Vietnam and neighboring countries. It was the act of an Evil Empire as sure as any. But in those days, outside of a lefty fringe, it was still beyond the boundaries of polite conversation to refer to the U.S. as an empire. Later, in the “unipolar moment” of the 1990s and 2000s, it became more acceptable, even celebrated.

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” George Bush advisor Karl Rove said in 2004. “And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

The reality that the U.S. is an empire is now a commonplace, a terminology widely used across the political spectrum. A declining empire, perhaps, but a globe-spanning hegemon nonetheless. Yet many U.S. of Americans have assumed it is overall still a force for good in the world. That illusion has been shattered in recent years, first by the complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza, then by the preemptive U.S.-Israel war against Iran, a clear violation of international law. The evils of empire are out in the open now.

Empire from the start

But the U.S. as an empire perpetrating many great evils goes back a long way, even to its precursor stages as English colonies on the Atlantic coast. The wars to seize lands from native tribes began almost from first settlement. The occupation of many of those lands by slave-based agriculture revved up not too long after.

The creation of the U.S. in the revolution of 1776 is surrounded by a mythology of freedom from a tyrannical king. Certainly democratic sentiments were rising from the population. But the leaders were a colonial ruling class that, in truth, wanted to build their own empire free of constraints Britain was putting on them. In 1763 it barred settlement on lands west of the Appalachians,........

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