Rome did not push its empire further into Germany because of any superior military resistance, but because the cost of conquest exceeded the value of extractable German resources… looting could not cover the costs.

By waging continuous war, “Washington’s empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America…

“After eight years of war and attempted occupation of Iraq, all Washington has for its efforts is several trillion dollars of additional debt (carried by the American people) and no Iraqi oil.

After ten years of (a) trillion dollar struggle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Washington has nothing to show for it except possibly some part of the drug trade that can be used to fund covert CIA operations.

America’s wars are very expensive; the national debt has doubled and the American people have no benefits from it.

No riches, no bread and circuses flow to Americans from Washington’s wars.

So what is it all about?

The answer is that Washington’s empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America.

In the New Empire success at war no longer matters. The extraction takes place by being at war. Huge sums of American taxpayers’ money have flowed into the American armaments industries and huge amounts of power into Homeland Security. The American empire works by stripping Americans of wealth and liberty.

The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israeli Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power. The US Constitution has been extracted in the interests of the Security State, and Americans’ incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1 percent. That is how the American Empire functions.

This truth doesn’t mean that the objects of American military aggression have escaped without cost. Large numbers of Muslims have been bombed and murdered and their economies and infrastructure ruined, but not in order to extract resources from them.

Source URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29988