As I wrote in an essay a few months ago, the best way to view the imperial nature of the U.S. government is to view it as an empire controlled by the city-state of Washington instead of as a broadly American phenomenon. Indeed, the territorial U.S. differs from Iraq and Afghanistan only in the sense that our occupation is a less volatile one. This allows the resemblance of "civil society" that supports and approves of the occupation, and rules out the need for the frightening displays of force that other people around the world endure at the hands of U.S. armed forces. Generally speaking, we chalk this relative lack of open violence up to our status as a "free people".
However, as we plunge deeper into financial crisis, that may change. Soldiers fresh from counterinsurgency operations in Iraq are deploying for missions within the U.S.. With the unrest likely upon full-blown collapse of the currency and the economy, Bush retains the prerogative to declare martial law and institute what is, in effect, military dictatorship. Essentially, the imperial managers of Earth in D.C. are deciding whether or not we need a surge - not in Iraq, but right here in the territorial United States.
Part of the process of taking back our freedom entails a sober analysis of our present political situation. There is no real difference between a free society under a government and a military occupation - each exists merely as different zones on a sliding scale of repression, which government dials up or down based on "conditions on the ground". Until we understand that we live in occupied territory, we will always be able to say "well, we got it better than Iraq" without realizing that the same dynamics are at play, at home and abroad.
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