Americans Have Lost Their Country
by
Paul Craig Roberts
The Bush-Cheney regime is America's first
neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has destroyed the
Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the
remains of America's moral reputation along with the infrastructures of two
Muslim countries and countless thousands of Islamic civilians. Plans have
been prepared, and forces moved into place, for an attack on a third Islamic
country, Iran, and perhaps Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well.
This extraordinary aggressiveness toward the US Constitution, international
law, and the Islamic world is the work, not of a vast movement, but of a
handful of ideologues principally Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott
Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, Philip Zelikow, and Attorney General
Gonzales. These are the main operatives who have controlled policy. They
have been supported by their media shills at the Weekly Standard, National
Review, Fox News, New York Times, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial
page and by "scholars" in assorted think tanks such as the American
Enterprise Institute.
The entirety of their success in miring the United States in what could
become permanent conflict in the Middle East is based on the power of
propaganda and the big lie.
Initially, the 9/11 attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden, but after an
American puppet was installed in Afghanistan, the blame for 9/11 was shifted
to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who was said to have weapons of mass destruction
that would be used against America. The regime sent Secretary of State Colin
Powell to tell the lie to the UN that the Bush-Cheney regime had conclusive
proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Having conned the UN, Congress, and the American people, the regime invaded
Iraq under totally false pretenses and with totally false expectations. The
regime's occupation of Iraq has failed in a military sense, but the
neoconservatives are turning their failure into a strategic advantage. At the
beginning of this year President Bush began blaming Iran for America's
embarrassing defeat by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents in Iraq.
Bush accuses Iran of arming the Iraqi insurgents, a charge that experts
regard as improbable. The Iraqi insurgents are Sunni. They inflict casualties
on our troops, but spend most of their energy killing Iraqi Shi'ites, who are
closely allied with Iran, which is Shi'ite. Bush's accusation requires us to
believe that Iran is arming the enemies of its allies.
On the basis of this absurd accusation a pure invention Bush has ordered
a heavy concentration of aircraft carrier attack forces off Iran's coast, and
he has moved US attack planes to Turkish bases and other US bases in
countries contingent to Iran.
In testimony before Congress on February 1 of this year, former National
Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said that he expected the regime to
orchestrate a "head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam
at large." He said a plausible scenario was "a terrorist act blamed on Iran,
culminating in a 'defensive' US military action against Iran." He said that
the neoconservative propaganda machine was already articulating a "mythical
historical narrative" for widening their war against Islam.
Why is the US spending one trillion dollars on wars, the reasons for which
are patently false. What is going on?
There are several parts to the answer. Like their forebears among the Jacobins
of the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks of the communist revolution, and
the National Socialists of Hitler's revolution, neoconservatives believe
that they have a monopoly on virtue and the right to impose hegemony on the
rest of the world. Neoconservative conquests began in the Middle East
because oil and Israel, with which neocons are closely allied, are both in
the Middle East.
The American oil giant, UNOCAL, had plans for an oil and gas pipeline
through Afghanistan, but the Taliban were not sufficiently cooperative. The
US invasion of Afghanistan was used to install Hamid Karzai, who had been on
UNOCAL's payroll, as puppet prime minister. US neoconservative Zalmay
Khalilzad, who also had been on UNOCAL's payroll, was installed as US
ambassador to Afghanistan.
Two years later Khalilzad was appointed US ambassador to Iraq. American oil
companies have been given control over the exploitation of Iraq's oil
resources.
The Israeli relationship is perhaps even more important. In 1996 Richard
Perle and the usual collection of neocons proposed that all of Israel's
enemies in the Middle East be overthrown. "Israel's enemies" consist of the
Muslim countries not in the hands of US puppets or allies. For decades Israel
has been stealing Palestine from the Palestinians such that today there is
not enough of Palestine left to comprise an independent country. The US and
Israeli governments blame Iran, Iraq, and Syria for aiding and abetting
Palestinian resistance to Israel's theft of Palestine.
The Bush-Cheney regime came to power with the plans drawn to attack the
remaining independent countries in the Middle East and with neoconservatives
in office to implement the plans. However, an excuse was required.
Neoconservatives had called for "a new Pearl Harbor," and 9/11 provided the
propaganda event needed in order to stampede the public and Congress into
war. Neoconservative Philip Zelikow was put in charge of the 9/11 Commission
Report to make certain no uncomfortable facts emerged.
The neoconservatives have had enormous help from the corporate media, from
Christian evangelicals, particularly from the "Rapture Evangelicals," from
flag-waving superpatriots, and from the military-industrial complex whose
profits have prospered. But the fact remains that the dozen men named in the
second paragraph above were able to overthrow the US Constitution and launch
military aggression under the guise of a preventive/preemptive "war against
terrorism."
When the American people caught on that the "war on terror" was a cloak for
wars of aggression, they put Democrats in control of Congress in order to
apply a brake to the regime's warmongering. However, the Democrats have
proven to be impotent to stop the neoconservative drive to wider war and,
perhaps, world conflagration.
We are witnessing the triumph of a dozen evil men over American democracy and
a free press.
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