-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: February 7, 2007 2:24:38 PM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: Fwd: Failed States: The U.S. and Israel (Roberts)
http://www.ichblog.eu/content/view/359/2/
*Failed States: The U.S. and Israel*
By Paul Craig Roberts
Monday, 05 February 2007
Iran, a nation with a 5,000 year history, is certainly not a failed
state. The main failed states in the Middle East are those that are
U.S, puppets. They represent American hegemony, not the interests
of their people.
02/05/07 "ICHBlog" -- Growing references by the U.S. and Israel to
the Muslim Middle East as a collection of failed states are part of
the propaganda campaign to strip legitimacy from Muslim states and
set them up for attack. These accusations spring from the hubris of
many Israelis, who see themselves as "God's Chosen People," a
guarantee of immunity instead of a call to responsibility, and many
Americans, who regard their country as "a city upon a hill" that is
"the light of the world." But do the U.S. and Israel fit the
profile of successful states, or are they failed states themselves?
A compelling case can be made that the U.S. and Israel are failed
states. Israel allegedly is a democracy, but it is controlled by a
minority of Zionist zealots who commit atrocities against
Palestinians in order to provoke terrorist acts that are then used
to perpetuate the right-wing's hold on political power. Israel has
perfected blowback as a tool of political control. The Israeli
state relies entirely on coercion and has no diplomacy. It stands
isolated in the world except for the U.S., which sustains Israel's
existence with money, military weapons, and the U.S. veto in the
United Nations.
Israel survives on life support from the U.S. A state that cannot
exist without outside support is a failed state.
What about the United States? The U.S. is an even greater failure.
Its existence is not dependent on life support from outside. The
U.S. has failed in another way. Not only has the state failed, but
the society as well.
The past six years have seen the rise of dictatorial power in the
executive and the collapse of the separation of powers mandated by
the U.S. Constitution. The president has declared himself to be
"The Decider." The power to decide includes the meaning and intent
of laws passed by Congress and whether the laws apply to the
executive. President Bush has openly acknowledged that he disobeyed
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and unlawfully spied on
Americans without warrants. Bush and his Attorney General could not
make it more clear that their position is that Bush is above the law.
It is also Bush’s position that he is above the Constitution. Bush
and his Attorney General maintain that as commander-in-chief in
"the war on terror," the executive has the power to decide the
applicability of civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution.
The U.S. Department of Justice (sic) has taken the position that
this decision is an executive decision alone beyond the authority
of the judiciary and the legislature.
An enfeebled and eviscerated Congress has acquiesced in the growth
of executive power, even legislating unconstitutional executive
powers into law. The Decider has grabbed the power to arrest people
on accusation alone and to detain them indefinitely without charges
or evidence. He has obtained the right to torture those whom he
arrests. The Geneva Conventions do not apply to the U.S. president,
declares the Regime. Bush has obtained the right to commit people
to death in military tribunals on the basis of hearsay and secret
evidence alone. The Bush Regime has succeeded in moving the
American state off the basis on which the Founding Fathers set it.
The Bush Regime led the American people to war in Iraq based
entirely on lies and deception. This is a known and undisputed
fact. Congress has done nothing whatsoever about this monstrous
crime and impeachable offense.
Under the Nuremberg standard, unprovoked aggression is a war crime.
The U.S. established this standard. Bush has violated it with
impunity.
Bush and his Attorney General assert Bush's power to attack Iran
independently of a Congressional declaration of war or any form of
congressional approval. Bush claims that his power to attack Iran
is merely an extension of his present power to conduct war in Iraq,
a power seized on the basis of lies and deception. Congress has
taken no action to disabuse Bush of his presumption.
Bush’s preparations for attacking Iran are highly visible. The
entire world can see the preparations and expects the attack.
Congress is mute in the face of a catastrophic widening of a war to
which a large majority of the American people are now opposed.
In national elections three months ago the American people used
democracy in an unsuccessful attempt to restrain the Bush Regime
from its warmongering ways by defeating the Republican Party and
giving control of both houses of Congress to Democrats.
Instead of acting, the Democrats have postured.
Indeed, some have joined Bush in his warmongering. Hillary Clinton,
regarded as the front runner for the Democratic Presidential
nomination, recently declared at an affair hosted by the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee, a leading instigator of war with
Iran, that Iran is a danger to the U.S. and a great threat to Israel.
Hillary’s claims are preposterous. Israel has large numbers of
nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Iran has none. Iran has no
ability to harm the U.S. and would have no motive except for the
Bush Regime's gratuitous provocations. A state in which a leading
contender for the presidential nomination can make utterly absurd
claims and suffer no consequence is a failed state.
The United States is a failed state, because in the U.S. it is not
possible for leadership to emerge. Politics is controlled by
powerful interest groups, such as A.I.P.A.C., the military-
industrial complex, transnational corporations, and "security"
agencies that are accumulating vast amounts of unaccountable power.
The American people spoke in November and it means nothing whatsoever.
The people are enfeebled because the media no longer has
independence. The U.S. media serves as propagandist for the state.
It cannot be otherwise in a highly concentrated media run not by
journalists but by advertising executives protecting stock values
that derive from federal broadcast licenses granted by the state.
Like the three monkeys, Congress sees no evil, the media speaks no
evil, and the people hear no evil. In the U.S., "news" consists of
the government's propaganda. "News" in America is exactly like the
"news" in George Orwell's "1984."
The U.S. is a failed state, because it is not true to any of the
principles upon which it was established. All over the world today,
America is seen as a rogue state, a hegemonic evil, and as the
greatest threat to peace and stability. In its new identify,
America is the total opposite of the Founding Fathers intention.
There is no greater failure than that.
Academics differentiate between failed states and rogue states. The
U.S. and Israel meet both criteria. The U.S. and Israel lead the
world in aggressive military actions and in killings of civilian
populations. Both countries meet the main indicators of failed
states as published in Foreign Policy's 2005 Failed States Index.
The leading indicators of failed states are inequality (not merely
poverty), "criminalization or delegitimization of the state, which
occurs when state institutions are regarded as corrupt, illegal, or
ineffective," and "demographic factors, especially population
pressures stemming from refugees" and "internally displaced
populations."
All economic indicators show that income and wealth inequality is
rapidly increasing in the U.S. The growth in inequality is the
result of the state's policy that favors shareholders and corporate
executives at the expense of American workers.
The income differences between Israelis and ghettoized Palestinians
are huge.
Trials and investigations of leading political figures in the U.S.
and Israel are an ongoing occurrence. Currently, the former chief-
of-staff of the vice president of the U.S. is on trial for lying to
the F.B.I. in an attempt to obstruct an investigation into the Bush
Regime’s illegal disclosure of an undercover C.I.A. operative. The
accused claims he is the fall guy for higher ups.
In Israel the president of the country is accused of rape and faces
indictment.
Both the U.S. and Israel routinely ignore international law and are
accused of committing war crimes by human rights organizations. The
U.S. Congress stands revealed as totally ineffective and unwilling
to constrain the executive. The American people have learned that
they cannot change the government’s policies through elections. By
fomenting the demise of the civil liberties that they are sworn to
uphold, President Bush and Attorney General Gonzales have
delegitimized the American state, turning it into an instrument of
oppression.
Israel’s policies in the West Bank have displaced a million
Palestinians, forcing them to be refugees from their own land.
Jordan is filled with Palestinian refugees, and Palestinian
existence in the West Bank is being increasingly confined to
ghettos cut off from farm land, schools, medical care and from
other Palestinians. President Jimmy Carter has described Israeli-
occupied Palestine as “apartheid.”
For decades, in the face of public opposition, the U.S. government
has encouraged massive legal and illegal immigration of diverse
peoples whose failure to assimilate is balkanizing the U.S.
population. Economic refugees from Mexico are changing the culture
and allegiance of entire sections of the American southwest, and
racial animosities are on the rise.
In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky defined one characteristic of a
failed state as a "democratic deficit, that is, a substantial gap
between public policy and public opinion." We see this gap in
Bush's decision to escalate the war in Iraq despite the opposition
of 70% of the American public. What does democracy mean if elected
leaders ignore public opinion?
Another characteristic of failed states is the failure to protect
their own citizens. Israel’s aggressive policies against
Palestinians provoke terror attacks on Israeli citizens. These
attacks are then used to justify more oppression of Palestinians,
which leads to more terror. Bush's military aggression in the
Middle East is the main cause of any terror threats that Americans
now face.
Another characteristic of a failed state is the departure of
citizens. Many Israelis, seeing no future for Israel in the
government's hostility to Arabs, are leaving Israel. Among Israelis
themselves, the legitimacy of the Israeli state is so endangered
that the Knesset has just passed a law to revoke the citizenship of
“unpatriotic” Israelis.
In the U.S., a large percentage of the population has lost
confidence in the government’s veracity. Polls show that 40% of
Americans do not believe the government’s story that the 9/11
attacks were the work of Arab terrorists. Many believe the attack
was a "false flag" operation carried out by elements in the Bush
Regime in order to create public acceptance for its planned
invasions in the Middle East.
A state that cannot tolerate moral conscience in its soldiers is a
failed state. The failure of the American state can be seen it its
prosecution of Lt. Ehren Watada. Watada comes from a family with a
military heritage. His response to the 9/11 attack was to join the
military. Diagnosed with asthma, he failed his physical, but
persevered and ended up with an officer’s commission.
Watada's problem is that he can recognize a war crime even when it
is committed by a might-makes-right state. The Abu Ghraib prison
tortures and the evidence that Bush deceived Americans about
weapons of mass destruction caused Watada to realize that he was on
the wrong side of the Nuremberg Principles, the U.N. Charter, and
the U.S. military code, which says American soldiers have an
obligation to disobey unlawful orders. He signed up to serve his
country, not to kill people for illegal and immoral reasons.
Watada refused to deploy to Iraq. He is being tried for refusing
deployment and for suggesting that President Bush deceived Americans.
By now every attentive American knows that Bush deceived them, and
our greatest patriots have said so. Watada is on trial for
suggesting what everyone knows to be true. He is not being tried
for veracity. He is being tried for speaking the truth.
Failure to deploy is a more understandable charge. There is no army
if soldiers do not follow orders. However, as the U.S. established
at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, following orders is not an
excuse for participating in war crimes. At the Nazi war crimes
trials, it was the U.S. that insisted that soldiers were
responsible for using judgment about the legality of their orders.
That is what Lt. Watada did. His trial will not broach the subject
of whether his judgment was correct. The evidence against him will
merely be that he did not deploy.
By trying Lt. Watada, the U.S. government is insisting that
American troops are not responsible for judging the legality of
their orders, only for following them. The standard applied to WW
II Germans is too high to be applied to Americans.
In a draft army Watada’s refusal to accept illegal orders could be
used by conscripted cannon fodder to derail the state’s intended
aggression. However, in a voluntary army in which soldiers seek to
serve, permitting Lt. Watada to have his conscience does not
imperil the command structure. Others less thoughtful and less
aware will carry forth the state’s enterprise.
The case against Israel and the U.S. does not preclude some Muslim
states from also meeting the criteria for failure. However, Iraq,
an artificial creation of Western colonial powers, was driven into
failure and civil war by American aggression. Iran, a nation with a
5,000 year history, is certainly not a failed state. The main
failed states in the Middle East are those that are U.S. puppets.
They represent American hegemony, not the interests of their people.
What the U.S. and Israel are attempting to do is to turn the entire
Muslim Middle East into failed states, that is, into puppet
regimes. By extending their hegemony in the Middle East, the U.S.
and Israel hope to prolong their own failed existence.
~~~
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the
Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.
He is coauthor of "The Tyranny of Good Intentions."
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