{"id":8556,"date":"2010-11-21T14:23:34","date_gmt":"2010-11-21T22:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=8556"},"modified":"2010-11-21T14:35:10","modified_gmt":"2010-11-21T22:35:10","slug":"chalmers-johnson-rip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/21\/chalmers-johnson-rip\/","title":{"rendered":"Chalmers Johnson, RIP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night, antiwar historian Chalmers Johnson died after an extended illness. This note is from Tom Engelhardt, who was Chalmers’ good friend and editor of his books.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sad to report that Chalmers Johnson died on Saturday. He was a stalwart of this site, writing for it regularly from its early moments<\/a>. Without the slightest doubt, he was one of the most remarkable authors I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had the pleasure to edit<\/a>, no less be friends with. He saw our devolving American world with striking clarity and prescience. He wrote about it with precision, passion, and courage. He never softened a thought or cut a corner. I dedicated my new book to him, writing that he was "the most astute observer of the American way of war I know. He broke the ground and made the difference." I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t change a word. He was a man on a journey<\/a> from Depression-era Arizona through the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and deep into a world in which the foundations of the American empire, too, began to shudder<\/a>. A scholar of Japan, one-time Cold Warrior, and CIA consultant, in the twenty-first century, he became the most trenchant critic of American militarism around. I first read a book of his \u00e2\u20ac\u201c on Communist peasants in North China facing the Japanese "kill-all, burn-all, loot-all" campaigns of the late 1930s \u00e2\u20ac\u201c when I was 20. I last read him this week at age 66. I benefited from every word he wrote. His Blowback Trilogy (Blowback<\/i><\/a>, The Sorrows of Empire<\/i><\/a>, and Nemesis<\/i><\/a>.) will be with us for decades to come. His final work, Dismantling the Empire: America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Last Best Hope<\/i><\/a>, is a testament to his enduring power, even as his body was failing him. To my mind, his final question was this: What would the "sole superpower" look like as a bankrupt country? He asked that question. Nobody, I suspect, has the answer. We may find out. "Adios," he invariably said as he signed off on the phone. Adios, Chal.<\/p>\n

James Fallows has a short obituary<\/a> for Chalmers at <\/i>The Atlantic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night, antiwar historian Chalmers Johnson died after an extended illness. This note is from Tom Engelhardt, who was Chalmers’ good friend and editor of his books. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sad to report that Chalmers Johnson died on Saturday. He was a stalwart of this site, writing for it regularly from its early moments. Without the slightest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-8556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8556"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8562,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8556\/revisions\/8562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8556"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}