"Nemesis:
The Last Days of the American Empire"
by
Chalmers Johnson
(New York: Metropolitan Books -- Henry Holt and Company, 2006)

Prologue: The Blowback Trilogy

"... some secret U.S. government operations and acts in distant lands would come back to haunt us. "Blowback" does not mean just revenge but retaliation for covert, illegal violence that our government has carried out abroad that it kept totally secret from the American public (even though such acts are seldom secret among the people on the receiving end)." pp. 1-2

"...'Why do they hate us?' The answer was not that some countries hate us because of of our democracy, wealth, lifestyle, or values but because of things our government did to various peoples around the world. ... most Americans have no framework that would link cause and effect." p. 2

"Because Americans generally failed to consider seriously why we had been attacked on 9/11, the Bush administration was able to respond in a way that made the situation far worse. ... we should have treated the attacks as crimes against the innocent, not acts of war. We should have proceeded against al-Qaeda the same way we might have against organized crime. It would have been wise to call what we were doing an 'emergency,' ... not a 'war.'" p. 4

1
Militarism and the Breakdown of Constitutional Government

"... what we do not care to remember, others may recall all too well." p. 53

2
Comparative Imperial Pathologies:
Rome, Britain, and America

"... Emperor Contantine's conversion to Christianity in 312 AD imposed the autocratic style of Rome on the church as much as it Christianized the Roman empire." p. 55

"... The collapse of the Roman Republic offers a perfect case study of how imperialism and militarism can undermine even the best defenses of democracy ..." p. 55

"Imperialism and militarism will ultimately breach the separation of powers created to prevent tyranny and defend liberty. The United States today, like the Roman Republic in the first century BC, is threatened by an out-of-control military-industrial complex and a huge secret government controlled exclusively by the president." ... But, as Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1759, 'Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.'" p. 89

3
Central Intelligence Agency:
The President's Private Army

4
U.S. Military Bases in Other People's Countries

5
How American Imperialism Actually Works:
The SOFA in Japan

6
Space: The Ultimate Imperialist Project

7
The Crisis of the American Republic

...