buchanan accurately describes the current state of and self description of the empire, and it ain't what they teach you in school;


For a president who won his office by denouncing the Middle East wars into which George W. Bush and Barack Obama plunged the nation, Donald Trump has assembled the most unabashedly hawkish conclave of foreign policy advisers in memory. And he himself seems to concede the point.
If foreign policy were decided by my security adviser John Bolton, the president confided recently, “We’d be in four wars by now.”
It was Bolton who ordered the Abraham Lincoln carrier group and B-52s to the Gulf and told the Pentagon to draw up plans to send 120,000 U.S. troops. It is Bolton who is charging Iran with using mines to sabotage four oil tankers outside the Strait of Hormuz.
Asked for evidence, Bolt barked back at reporters: “Who else would you think is doing it? Somebody from Nepal?”But if Bolton is first hawk, he is not without rivals in the inner circle of the commander in chief.
At West Point last week, Vice President Mike Pence, after hailing the diversity of a class with the highest number of Hispanic and black women graduates ever, laid out what the future holds in store for them.
“You will fight on a battlefield for America … You will lead soldiers in combat. It will happen.
“Some of you will join the fight against radical Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of you will join the fight on the Korean Peninsula and in the Indo-Pacific, where North Korea continues to threaten the peace, and an increasingly militarized China challenges our presence.
“Some of you will join the fight in Europe, where an aggressive Russia seeks to redraw international boundaries by force. And some of you may even be called upon to serve in this hemisphere.
“And when that day comes, I know you will move to the sound of the guns … and you will fight, and you will win.
“Put your armor on,” Pence admonished the warriors, “so that when — not if — that day comes, you’ll be able to stand your ground.”.........https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/06/patrick-j-buchanan/do-trumps-hawks-speak-for-trump/