Harold Bloom: "The Fall of America"

"I am 77 years old and I have never seen this country in such a bad state. It is madness. What we are seeing is the fall of the Roman Empire, only now it is the fall of America, the glory of our Empire. This war is what Parthia was to Rome. "The horror of what is taking place in Iraq exceeds my worst fears five or six years ago (after Bush came to power). I am horrified at the disastrous mistake involved. Imagine the complete madness in trying to occupy a large Arab country in the middle of the Arab world, a culture we know precious little about, and who speaks a language only a handful of our specialists can speak, with armed forces which we have limited control of and with a large army of private soldiers .... The whole thing is a scandal ... a series of lies. I don't understand the motivation for the war, but suspect the real reason for the war, which one would suspect of a country which is a third oligarchy, a third plutocracy and a third theocracy, is that it simply is a profitable machine." Sitting in the middle of his living room and in the brown leather armchair from which he has given most of his interviews in recent years, Bloom sighs deeply and a sad grimace spreads over his expressive face. It soon switches to anger, as he expands on the consequences of the war and, ultimately, of Bush at power: a growing national debt and a weakened dollar in tandem with a spiraling war budget, as well as America's lost credibility on the international stage due to the Iraq war and the situation in Afghanistan. Not to mention Guantanamo Bay, the use of torture and humiliation at Abu Ghraib and the CIA's rendition program. "We have caused a monstrous mess. We don't even count killed Iraqis. God knows how many Iraqi women, children and men have been killed by our accidental shootings, which we are such experts at, or by other Iraqis. No, 'Benito Bush' (Bloom's pet name for President George Bush) deserves, if we had a functioning civil law in the world, to be condemned for crimes against humanity. Bush is ultimately responsible for this war," Bloom says pointing angrily with his index finger in the air as his dark eyes burn below a pair of thick dark eyebrows and a crown of unruly white hair. "It is bleeding our nation, and I can't see a solution in the near future. We are obviously so deeply involved concerning blood, money and the situation on the ground that it will be very hard for us to pull out." http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/73720/

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Harold Bloom: "The Fall Of America"

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