David Bromwich at Huffpo on the "mirror" of 1776 warns that a hubristic US — "vainglorious," as they used to say– is forgetting the lessons of the founders by pushing "subjugation" in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iran:
A mark of the Old World, all the founders agreed, was the addiction of monarchs to war as a means of commercial and imperial expansion. In the case of Britain, the surest proof of the corruption of the wars was the lack of trust by the government in the loyalty of British subjects to fight them. They paid contractors, or as they called them, mercenaries:
"He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun."
Yet the wars instigated by the king were not merely wars of an empire against rebellious colonies. They could also take the form of civil wars, started up by the empire to extend its control:
"He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us."
And here again the mirror darkens; we seem to witness ourselves in a second-sight procession. For what is the doctrine of counterinsurgency but a program for exciting insurrections in other countries–countries whose existing order we find it to our advantage to disturb or overthrow?
To explain the difference between the picture of America in 1776 and the picture we see today would require political courage as well as imagination. We hardly have a leader or leaders in possession of such qualities; but when they do come, it is clear what knowledge they will have to impart. An empire and a republic cannot coexist. So long as they try to, the empire will ride the republic. Life to one is death to the other.
