I often remark that Gore Vidal was the last great American intellectual, that maybe unfair to others, but I struggle to find anyone younger that eclipses him. I think Gore Vidal had a profound understanding of the USA as both a Republic and as an Empire, and this understanding comes in part from his work on the Roman Empire.
I think he is almost unchallengeable in his understanding of politics in the USA in the twentieth century

Congratulations on starting this thread Orathaic

I imagine Gore Vidal would be scathing in his comments on the current presidential election campaign and candidates

http://occupywallst.org/forum/gore-vidal-well-have-a-dictatorship-soon-in-the-us/

The bit where he regrets changing over to support Obama instead of Hillary.

"How’s Obama doing? “Dreadfully. I was hopeful. He was the most intelligent person we’ve had in that position for a long time. But he’s inexperienced. He has a total inability to understand military matters. He’s acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: solve that and you solve terrorism.” America should leave Afghanistan, he says. “We’ve failed in every other aspect of our effort of conquering the Middle East or whatever you want to call it.” The “War on Terror” was “made up”, Vidal says. “The whole thing was PR, just like ‘weapons of mass destruction’. "

It is wonderful to hear an American of such stature actually come out and criticise the president. And it is not like he thinks Bush was any better...

Yes well Afghanistan has defied the British Empire, Russia and now the American Empire

Thanks for sharing I never really thought of listening to him. Good stuff.

@MajorMitchel, **shh, don't tell the americans, thry might realise the a failed adventure in Afghanistan both the British Empire ans Soviet Union collapsed... **

Loved the anecdote of Tiberius.

What's this seditious nonsense about the British Empire collapsing ????
Britain and the Commonwealth nations may not be the dominant Super power post WW2, confident we won that stoush in the Falklands, and our Air Forces are the best quality over Syria, it's Daffy Donald's bromance demagogue pal Putin's flyers carpet bombing and backing bastardbasssar

QueenBetty2 and her nation & commonwealth have evolved as a global power. Not collapsed. Russia is still a global force, evolving into it's current state..criminal oligarchs, Demagogue dictator & a lot of decent Russians as well

It was just a coincidence in timing. The British lost a lot of their power sometime after the wars in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union collapsed sometime after their invasion of Afghanistan. A coincidence in timing rather than a direct cause of decline.

A coinidence of timing, indeed. An history repeats itself for those who don't learn from it.

You can argue that the same internal factors which drove the British and Soviets to invade Afghanistan also lead to their collapse. And that America is on the same path.

It is not that going to Afghanistan is cursed or anything. (Though maybe if we believed this we'd stop making the same mistakes, and the mental construct of 'cursed' would have a useful social value) It is that Empires tend to over-extend themselves eventually, an the highly mountainous Afghanistan is very difficult to conquer, due in large part to geography.

Aside - If you ask certain anarchists, the state is an entity which collects taxes to pay for an army to collect taxes, and the people who refuse to pay taxes are forced to flee to defensive positions - traditionally and currently this means into the mountains - there may infact be a history of anti-state (anarchistic) hill peoples, who have opposed and threatened state power of every (self-defined) civilisation. Unfortunately the most we know about various hill peoples is what was written by the states who they opposed - thus we know only the propoganda of their enemies.

But back to the collapse of Empires. Mitchel, did the Roman Empire collapse around 500 years ago or 1500 years ago?

What wonderful timing.. I've just seen scant news that Australian Air Force has been part of what's briefly described as a bombing mistake & Syrian army forces were hit