By Anthony Gregory

In a free republic, or even a normal country, it would be considered a big deal when the government attacked a foreign nation. We would be able to keep track of the number of enemies we’ve had abroad. The US government, on the other hand, has long been an empire. Thus, when Obama widened the war into Pakistan, bombing and displacing large numbers of civilians, it was hardly on anyone’s radar.

Yesterday, the US invaded a town in Somalia. It hardly made the news. In April, the US threatened an invasion of Eritrea — and most Americans probably don’t know where Eritrea is, that is, if they’ve heard of it at all.

This is the nature of empire: Since the end of WWII, we’ve always been at war, with Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Serbia and Afghanistan, not including the dozens of other countries the US bombed or staged coups in during that time. This is not normal for a people, it’s not healthy for a nation, and it cannot be squared in any way with the type of free country America was supposed to be. If the citizenry do not even know which countries their government has been at war with, in what sense is democratic representation meaningful?