GEORGIE ANNE GEYER History of empires offers sobering lesson

WASHINGTON -- Historically, the glory of empires and the grandeur of world conquest -- whether for greed, hubris or the spreading of superior ideology -- begin with the golden sun exploding on the horizon. Has anyone ever seen such wonders?
But the day wears on, and at the stifling and enervating heat of midday, your energies begin to flag. By nightfall you must face the reality that you never dreamed of: All the time, there was an underside to empire; from the beginning there were secret weaknesses growing and moldering that the conqueror could not afford to see.
Even as the Bush administration and the president's neocon ideological Praetorian Guard are celebrating their "reconfiguration" of the Middle East, warning signs are beginning to surface about their empire.
First, the troop problem. This week was witness to a sorrowful figure: 1,502 American troops have been killed in Iraq, a country we had no reason to attack, and 11,220 have been seriously wounded. Iraqis killed? Maybe as few as 18,000 -- or, more likely, as many as 200,000. Who cares?
At the same time, every newspaper and television news station reported that for the first time since 2001, the Army began the fiscal year in October with a mere 18.4 percent of the year's target of 80,000 active-duty recruits already committed. That is less than half of last year's figure. In the National Guard, it is even worse.
On the surface, Americans still aren't actually saying they don't like the war. But even the U.S. military acknowledged that a major problem is that many parents are telling their children not to enlist.
And why should anyone be surprised? As many of us for years argued, a nation-state needs a draft, if only to strengthen the citizenry's continued will to control its destiny. This is the inevitable outcome of a volunteer army.
Among the neocon civilians in the Pentagon, soldiers were simply chess pieces to be moved around in service to their theories. And it worked for a while because, without a draft, many Americans withdrew from attacking the war out of, I believe, a deep guilt about having a professional army fight in place of their own kids. But now, that secret exchange seems to be fading.
Second, the financial problem. Despite those who demurred for the last three years that the war "wouldn't cost much" -- "Why, it will be paid for with Iraq's oil!" -- that just isn't happening. The price tag for our wars of the 21st century has reached $300 billion and climbing, including $81.9 billion just requested from Congress. (This includes Afghanistan and the war on terror, but the great mass of the money is for Iraq.)
But just three weeks ago, the central bank of South Korea reported that it intended to diversify into other currencies and move away from dollar-based assets, probably to euros. Most financially adept Americans know that not only do we have dangerous trade deficits with many Asian nations, but that they also hold large (many say untenable) amounts of our debt. South Korea itself holds about $69 billion in American Treasury securities, or 4 percent of the total foreign Treasury holdings.
As The Washington Post put it in a recent editorial: "The Korean comment ping-ponged around the world, all hell broke loose, with currency traders selling dollars for fear that the central banks of Japan and China, which hold immense dollar reserves -- a combined $900 billion, or 46 percent of foreign Treasury holdings -- might follow suit." The Dow Jones Industrial Average immediately slipped 1.6 percent, the worst percentage drop in five months.
Because South Korea, Japan and Taiwan moved swiftly to allay fears, the markets righted themselves -- for now. But there was still no response from the American administration about the increasingly weakened dollar. Whenever he has been asked about the problem, Vice President Dick Cheney has dismissed the fact that a debtor nation today inevitably becomes a dependent nation tomorrow. "It's all on paper," he says.
Dangerous warnings
But these indicators are palpable, increasingly dangerous warnings of a country posturing for the world out on the boulevard while refusing to keep its household in shape. And this, indeed, is what has always happened to empires: Their leaders glory in their hubris, they overreach, they fail as much from internal factors as from external ones, and they bring their people down with them. As the great historian of empire, John Baggot Glubb, has tallied up, every great empire was dead within 50 years of its height.
Despite some recent immediate successes, the difference here is that there is no will to empire on the part of the American people. This remains an empire for the few, paid for ultimately by the reluctant, but inattentive, many. Who knows? Maybe one day, enough American parents will convince their kids not to go.
Universal Press Syndicate