It's Evening in America: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

Part 3 of 8

Can I tell you something more?

I could describe in detail the aggressive and extensive economic colonialism we engaged in beyond our century of geographic expansion, which only required planting our flag on the roofs of corporate headquarters not in the sand, but I won’t. This is a long essay, and I’ve made my point. Admit it or not and like it or not, America is a fucking empire.

Setting aside the dubious morality of how we acquired much of the land, and that nasty war with ourselves over the issue of slavery – another stain on our self-proclaimed moral virtue – and World War I and the Great Depression notwithstanding, there can be no question that by any social, economic, or geopolitical metric, for all of our history up to the middle of the 20th Century we were on the rise.

One could argue, as I’m about to, the apex of our existence as an empire came after winning World War II with its post-war booms that produced astonishing economic growth and lots of babies.

From that point forward it’s been a slow and at times imperceptible fall from grace, beginning with the Korean War fought from 1950 to 1953, a conflict that was the first major so-called ‘proxy war’ of America’s so-called Cold War with the Communist Bloc of China and the Soviet Union. They backed the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (the North), and America and its United Nations allies fought for and with the Republic of Korea (the South). The war eventually ground to a bloody stalemate which ended the fighting and split the peninsula in half politically at the 38th Parallel. But no peace treaty was ever signed, so technically the war is still going on to this day. The result was that neither side would officially suffer defeat, but neither could claim victory either, which tarnished the newly acquired mystique of U.S. military might.

The second major proxy in the Cold War began to heat up almost immediately following the Korean armistice. After the French abandoned Southeast Asia because, well, they’re French, the 1954 Geneva Conference carved Vietnam in half so the Communist and American empires lined up again on their respective sides of the 50-yard line for the coin flip.

The Domino Theory in vogue here at the time held that if any one country became a communist regime, then all the adjoining countries would follow suit. This theory made as much sense as saying because someone in the neighborhood paints their house with polka dots, then everyone else on the block will do so too, but our foreign policy was laser-focused on containing the so-called ‘red menace’ and that required military intervention in countries halfway around the world.

Vietnam remained a largely low-profile guerilla war until President Kennedy started ramping up active American involvement, and by the end of 1963 there were 16,300 combat troops and advisors in the country.

But after the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 gave President Johnson congressional authority to increase our presence without an act of war – infamous because the incident never actually happened – the full force and fury of the U.S. military was unleashed.

Troop deployment rose to 184,000 by the end of 1965 and ballooned to more than half a million in 1968. Overwhelming manpower and firepower, together with a massive bombing campaign exploiting near total air superiority, was expected to quickly subdue if not completely destroy the North Vietnamese army and win the war.

Obviously, that didn’t happen. By 1971, unable to overcome the fierce resolve and asymmetrical warfare tactics used by Viet Cong fighters, more than 58,000 Americans had been killed with countless more wounded or missing in action. Which led to the withdrawal of most U.S. troops by the end of 1972, and those remaining the following year with signing of the Paris Peace Accords. It is not known exactly how many Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died – and Cambodians, and Laotians – but estimates range from at least one million to as many as three.

What we do know is that the failed Vietnam War, punctuated by our shambolic and shameful retreat, exposed for all the world to see the limits of American power and influence, especially outside the Western Hemisphere.

The conflict not only killed far too many of our finest, and damaged our reputation around the globe, it also played a major role in shredding the social fabric and dividing our population at home. Vietnam became a flashpoint and litmus test for Americans, half of whom wanted total engagement and victory over the red menace with unquestioning loyalty to flag and country, and the other half who saw the war as immoral and unnecessary and just wanted out. With the 1967 Summer of Love in San Francisco as a notable exception, anti-war protests had erupted in cities and on college campuses, and in a horrible, epochal moment on May 4, 1970, four young people were killed and nine wounded when National Guard troops opened fire on students at Kent State University in Ohio who were protesting the draft and the war.

That was bad enough for our good old empire, but throughout roughly the same period of time, the Civil Rights movement and rise of feminism served to further cleave the country along racial and political fault lines.

Deep-seated fear and animus, along with still-simmering resentment over the outcome of the Civil War, found its voice when populist politicians in the South fanned the flames of racial prejudice. Millions of Christian conservatives considered feminist’s rejection of traditional gender roles and their newly minted independence and sexual freedom as religious and social apostasy. Worse yet, the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, and the shooting of George Wallace in 1972, greatly deepened our national cynicism and suggested that violence was becoming an answer to political strife. Maybe even the only one.

But there’s more I want to tell you.

To be continued next week…

Author’s Note – April 30th marked the 50-year anniversary of the official end of the Vietnam War. Which is notable for two reasons. I narrowly missed being drafted and surely would’ve been called because my lottery number was four, but nevertheless it means I must be old. And also, it’s only taken fifty short years to drive the empire into a ditch.