Empire by Dar Williams

Album: My Better Self (2005)

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Songfacts®:

This song is a protest against the war in Iraq. It accuses the Bush administration of starting a holy war and trying to build an empire. Williams also takes a shot at the administration's policy on torture: "We'll kill the terrorizers and a million of their races, but when our people torture you that's a few random cases." >>
Suggestion credit:
Bertrand - Paris, France
Williams said of this song in an interview with The Progressive: "The best, most solid place to stand as you look at our present situation is on a foundation of history. The Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the Nazi empire all have things in common. It's a cautionary song because empires are doomed. They become more diffuse, more broke, demagogues rule, and so I was just pointing out some similarities between past empires and what's going on right now. They all have had to apply more and more harsh rhetoric of superiority and divine right to justify the building of hegemony."

Comments: 1

Patricia from UsaI loved the song the first time I heard it, but I disagree with the artist that establishing an hegemony was what we were doing in Iraq. We now know there were WMD in Iraq - this information was published not long ago by the Obama administration, so the "Bush lied, people died" mantra is itself a proven lie. There are at least two other major nuclear powers who are filling the power vacuum left when the current administration gave Russia the "reset button" and essentially unilateral nuclear disarmament, so that Vladimir Putin is now free to be the hegemon of Eastern Europe, while ISIS (using arms given them partly by the Obama administration and money by Saudi Arabia) has its own hegemony, and a criminal, murderous, bloody and literally rapacious one where 5 thousand American troops died to establish a working democracy. Walking away from being able to deter crimes like these is just as bad as what Dar Willams accused Bush of doing.

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