The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed

Mr. Eland lays out persuasive arguments showing that the U.S. has been acting as an empire, particularity since 1950, rather than as the republic established in the U.S. Constitution. He presents separate chapters addressing the reasons that conservatives, liberals, and all citizens should be against empire. His point is that most foreign entanglements do us more harm than good, leaving him open to criticism for being isolationist, but the point is that even if foreign threats to the U.S. arise, it will be decades in the making, during which we stay abreast of events, rather than continually funding security for other countries while they use their savings for their own economic development.

eland does a unique thing with this book - he deconstructs the imperialism argument from every perspective. so it really feels like he's not preaching to the choir. by doing so, he strengthens his argument. no matter what your political philosophy is, this book finds a way to address you and dissuade you from supporting the american empire (it may or may not technically be one, depending on how you define it, but you know what he's talking about here). admittedly, eland is a bit more of an isolationist than i'd like, but hey, people with different political views coming to similar conclusions is a good thing! it's also a pretty easy read - you don't need to have coursework in international security or international political economy to get what he's saying.

As I said it for another book ("The New American Empire"), Ivan Eland's book "The Empire Has No Clothes" is also a great book to see through Bush's lies. Now, George W. Bush says that he accepts responsibility for taking the U.S. to war in Iraq based on faulty intelligence. -This is all wrong. It was not the intelligence that was faulty; it was Bush's intentions to wage war against Iraq no matter what were the intelligence and the facts. He twisted the intelligence reports and invented lies around his already decided policy. That's why he is guilty of having launched a war of aggression on lies and deception, and on having violated, in so doing, international law. He and his neocon advisors should pray that they will never be brought before an international court of justice.

A direct, educated antithesis to the imperial warmongering of Kaplan and the like. A read that will interest anyone who is interested in preserving our declining democratic republic.

Eland challenges conventional wisdom about why so many people around the world dislike Americans--it's not who we are or what we believe, but how our government behaves. With specific chapters directed at both conservatives and liberals explaining how over-reaching US interventionism goes against their principles, there is something in this book for everyone.