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President Obama’s announcement to end the war in Iraq at the end of the year was seen as the right move by a majority of Americans, 71% to be exact, as per a November 2011 Wall Street Journal poll. That war, fought for nearly nine years, was initially popular with the public but quickly became the hallmark of George W. Bush’s failed foreign policy. Meanwhile, the longest war the US has ever waged rages on in Afghanistan where attempts to broker peace between Afghanistan and the Pakistan-sponsored Taliban recently failed. The US’s practice of nightime raids in Afghanistan have come under scrutiny once more with the death this last Saturday of a pregnant woman in Gardez. The woman, who was eight months pregnant, was killed when her house was surrounded by US troops and her husband and son arrested. And in Libya, where US forces joined NATO in a short war to overthrow Moammar Gaddafi’s regime this year, chaos still reigns. Despite the end of the dictatorial government, there are far too many reports of atrocities being committed against Gaddafi loyalists. In a new book commenting on the state and impending decline of the American empire, Nation Institute Fellow, Tom Engelhardt, lays out his analysis of how the US is going down the same path that the Soviet Union went down. Namely, we are pouring so much of our national wealth into the military industrial complex, fanning the flames of public fear to justify the expenditures, that it is only a matter of time before the world’s sole superpower faces the same fate as its Cold War rival.

GUEST: Tom Engelhardt, creator and director of TomDispatch.com, and a fellow of the Nation Institute. His earlier books includes The American Way of War, The End of Victory Culture. and a novel called The Last Days of Publishing.

Read Tom Engelhardt’s work at www.TomDispatch.com.