A faded yellow poster hangs on my office wall. It shows an American soldier with one foot planted in Vietnam, the other stepping upon Nicaragua. The poster’s caption reads: “From My Lai to Managua. The World Knows Who The Real Terrorists Are!”

The text, written by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, addresses “those in the U.S. military, draft age youth and all others who would answer the call to defend the Empire …” It continues: “Shipped off in the name of duty, honor and patriotism we found ourselves being terrorists for U.S. Imperialism. Many of us came to realize that our enemy was not the people we had been sent to kill, but the government that had sent us there …”

Vietnam Veterans Against the War did not mince words. These young soldiers had gone off to war believing they were fighting to free the Vietnamese people from communism. They returned home convinced that they had been used as hired killers to expand the American empire: “They wanted us to be John Waynes — full of pride in the Empire as we murdered our way through Southeast Asia. Today that same government wants you to be Jon Rambo — as it prepares to blaze its way across Central America, the world and onward into the mushroom clouded future.”

During the ’70s and ’80s, the empire did blaze its way across Central America. In Chile, the CIA staged a coup against Salvadore Allende’s popularly elected government, then installed a dictator who tortured and murdered thousands of innocent people. At the School of the Americas, the empire trained soldiers from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras in the art of torture and assassination. These soldiers returned to their poverty-stricken countries where they raped and robbed and massacred hundreds of thousand of human beings. All of this was done in the name of fighting communism.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the American empire has launched yet another crusade, kidnapping, jailing, torturing and assassinating “terror suspects” in order to spread peace, justice and democracy throughout the world. In Iraq, approximately 100,000 citizens and more than 2,100 American soldiers have died, thus far, in this campaign to prove that the American empire speaks not just for all humanity, but indeed for the divine.

In order to fight this war, say Mr. Bush and friends, phones must be tapped, mail opened, e-mails read, anti-war activists spied upon, bogus arrests made, phony trials held, innocent people jailed, people’s lives ruined. In short, if one is to believe the Bush administration, we the people must accept the idea that Big Brother knows what is best for all of us. After all, no one knows more about terror than those who have worked to overthrow legitimate governments, prop up dictators, assassinate popular leaders, invade other countries and train, supply and support death squads.

The empire appears not to learn from its mistakes. Instead, it remains convinced that it has a right to commit crimes against humanity in the name of rhetorical slogans. Those who question the Bush administration’s right to rewrite the Constitution and rescind the Bill of Rights are called unpatriotic and, even, traitors. Yet among the administration’s most persistent critics are men and women who spent their entire lives working for the FBI, CIA, NSA, State Department and United States military.

It does appear that people here and abroad are beginning to question the legitimacy, even the sanity, of the empire’s arrogant, dictatorial, homicidal logic. One thing is clear: The empire will continue to launch wars, invade sovereign nations and commit human rights abuses until ordinary people summon the courage to say, “Not in our name.”

Fred wilcox is an associate professor in the writing department. E-mail him at fwilcox@ithaca.edu.