Breach of Trust  - Part 2

     [This book is a part of The American Empire Project in which Metropolitan Books offers "short, argument driven books" regarding the American  Imperium.]

"Empire, long considered an offense against America's democratic heritage threatens to define the relationship between our country and the rest of the world."                                             The American Empire Project

                       Closing the circle of history.

     Bacevich opened this book with an epigraph from Edward Gibbons classic, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

In the purer ages of the commonwealth, the use of arms was reserved for... citizens who had a country to love, a property to defend and some share in enacting those laws which it was in their interest to maintain. But as public freedom was lost in extent of conquest, war was gradually improved into an art, and degraded into a trade...That public virtue which among the ancients was denominated by patriotism derived from a stray sense of interest in the preservation of free government... Such a sentiment could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary servants of a despotic prince.

     Bacevich closes his book with the words of General George Marshall's warning against criminal governments:

There must not be a large standing army subject to the behest of a group of schemers. The citizen-soldier is the guarantee against such a misuse of power. 

     Behold the beauty of history, regenerating mans story over and over and....

 

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