It’s a given that any nation would defend itself against a foreign invader. Human history of course provides many examples of events involving what we now call national security; and unfortunately, nations going beyond what would be self-defense for their own national security by threatening another’s.

Going beyond its own self-defense, and repeatedly, a nation descends into the role of empire with a colonial and/or imperial foreign policy. Today, the world’s only superpower carries on the exceptionality tradition.

If one is to criticize, e.g., the atrocities committed by the United States as an empire, members among the U.S. citizenry, especially on the right, react with disbelief, denial and/or anger. Then, the usual epithets are thrown at the “enemy”: “America Hater,” “terrorist,” “traitor,” etc. Deep denial especially is a “high hurdle” for the denier to “jump” over.

As Sidney Lens and Howard Zinn reveal in their book, “The Forging of the American Empire,” (1971), its title, and contents, precisely show that the U.S. founders were fond of empire from the very beginning.

Thomas Jefferson avidly supported empire, and welcomed its objectives, while supporting liberty and the phrase, “all men are created equal.” The Library of Congress has on record his 1809 letter to colleague James Madison revealing a fondness for expansion, "…we should then have only to include the north [Canada] in our confederacy, which would be of course in the first war, and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation: & I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire & self-government."

In recent years and now, we have the repeated phrase, “protecting national security,” i.e., usually feigning self-defense to “justifiably” impose exceptionalism.

Both U.S. ruling “parties,” Republican and Democrat, are more bi-partisan than ever in using national security, usually in theory, not practice. Since the changing of the international situation, starting when the Soviet Union dissolved, U.S. leaders, especially Republicans, have tried to pick up where the U.S. left off in the Gilded Age characterized by an overt superiority complex. (This was before the USSR existed.)

During the Bush Jr. regime, in 2002, the National Security Strategy of the United States (NSS) was, also known as the Bush Jr. doctrine, was proclaimed. What the document comes down to is maintaining empire. It’s called a “grand doctrine for a new world order [yet another].” It declares:

“The U.S. possesses unprecedented-and unequal-strength and influence in the world. Sustained by faith in the principles of liberty and a value for a free society, this position comes with unparalleled responsibilities, obligations and opportunity. The great strength of this nation must be used to promote a balance of power that favors freedom…we will work to translate this moment of influence into decades of peace, prosperity and liberty.” It is based on “a distinctly American internationalism.” U.S. president Barack Obama has also proclaimed a version of national security:

“Two decades since the end of the Cold War have been marked by both promise and perils of change. The circle of peaceful democracies has expanded; the specter of nuclear war has lifted; major powers are at peace; the global economy has grown; and more individuals can determine their own destiny.”

There’s really no difference between the Bush Jr. and Obama doctrines, as though one person is making the same declaration twice. The tone of empire is expressed thru the usual sugar-coated praises, but revealed in Bush Jr.’s phrase “American Internationalism” and Obama’s vision of the U.S. “shaping an international order…underwriting global security.”

There have been writers who have translated this brand of U.S. national security for what it is:

The book, “The Deaths of Others: The fate of Civilians in America’s Wars,” by John Tirman provides details (possibly for the first time in a book) of civilian deaths in other countries resulting from the U.S. “protecting” its “national security.” And the victims are generally ignored as if they never existed.

Well-known writer and satirist, and the late, Gore Vidal has used his pen like a sword over the years in effectively criticizing and condemning U.S. foreign policy. At a National Press Club speech in Washington, D.C., Vidal noted the “fiftieth anniversary of the National Security Act, saying it was passed “without any national debate or the peoples’ consent. It “replaced the old republic with a national security state very much in the global empire business” and added that “forty years of mindless wars created a debt of $5 trillion.”

In the name of national security, the U.S. empire has tried, and tries, imposing ultra-national security, with the use of appeals to fear and hysteria, assuring the U.S. population that “evil enemies” are always out there, planning to invade the U.S. and take away their freedoms. But the real results of “national security” include a path of destruction from the Philippines to Mexico.

If this goes on, a self-fulfilling prophecy of despising “evil doers” invading the U.S. could inevitably become a reality. Ironic, but not due to “bad guy” conspiracy theories. It would be the result of provocations from an empire with an insecure security to justify being a foreign invader.