(A) Benefits of the Empire
Americans in general benefit from and depend upon the exploitation, oppression, and impoverishment of many in the world, the conditions secured by Washington's military might.
(B) Guilt
Citizens and residents of the United States are guilty, by virtue of either their enjoyment of benefits of the empire or their consent to the empire's repression of others or both.
(C) Retributive Justice
The guilty deserve punishment.
In my opinion, all three ideas above should be criticized and rejected, but criticisms of the empire (as well as criticisms of Israel) are often couched in moral terms that partake of one or more of them. For the last several years, we have seen outpourings of books and articles critical of US imperialism (and Israel), but class analyses of the empire, especially ones that clarify American workers' positions in it (or ones that clarify Jewish workers' positions in Israel), are hard to come by, perhaps because of the waning of Marxism. That's a big problem we need to rectify. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>