March 29, 2011
What Does the World Think Now?
Obama Raises American Hypocrisy to Higher Level
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
What does the world
think? Obama has been using air strikes and drones against civilians in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and probably Somalia. In his March 28
speech, Obama justified his air strikes against Libya on the grounds
that the embattled ruler, Gadhafi, was using air strikes to put down a
rebellion.
Gadhafi has been a black hat for as long as I can
remember. If we believe the adage that “where there is smoke there is
fire,” Gadhafi is probably not a nice fellow. However, there is no doubt
whatsoever that the current US president and the predecessor
Bush/Cheney regime have murdered many times more people in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia than Gadhafi has murdered in
Libya.
Moreover, Gadhafi is putting down a rebellion
against state authority as presently constituted, but Obama and
Bush/Cheney initiated wars of aggression based entirely on lies and
deception.
Yet Gadhafi is being demonized, and
Bush/Cheney/Obama are sitting on their high horse draped in cloaks of
morality. Obama described himself as saving Libyans from violence while
Obama himself murders Afghans, Pakistanis, and whomever else.
Indeed, the Obama regime has been torturing a US
soldier, Bradley Manning, for having a moral conscience. America has
degenerated to the point where having a moral conscience is evidence of
anti-Americanism and “terrorist activity.”
The Bush/Cheney/Obama wars of naked aggression have bankrupted America.
Joseph Stiglitz,
former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers,
concluded that the money wasted on the Iraq war could have been used to
fix America’s Social Security problem for half a century. Instead, the money
was used to boost the obscene profits of the armament industry.
The obscene wars of aggression, the obscene profits
of the offshoring corporations, and the obscene bailouts of the rich
financial gangsters have left the American public with annual budget
deficits of approximately $1.5 trillion. These deficits are being
covered by printing money. Sooner or later, the printing presses will
cause the US dollar to collapse and domestic inflation to explode.
Social Security benefits will be wiped out by inflation rising more
rapidly than the cost-of-living adjustments. If America survives, no
one will be left but the mega-rich. Unless there is a violent
revolution.
Alternatively, if the Federal Reserve puts the brake
on monetary expansion, interest rates will rise, sending the economy
into a deeper depression.
Washington, focused on its newest war, is oblivious
to America’s peril. As Stiglitz notes, the costs of the Iraq war alone
could have kept every foreclosed family in their home, provided health
care for every American child, and wiped out the student loans of
graduates who cannot find jobs because they have been outsourced to
foreigners. However, the great democratic elected government of “the
world’s only superpower” prefers to murder Muslims in order to enhance
the profits of the military/security complex. More money is spent
violating the constitutional rights of American air travelers than is
spent in behalf of the needy.
The moral authority of the West is rapidly
collapsing. When Russia, Asia, and South America look at Europe,
Australia and Canada, they see American puppet states that contribute
troops to the aggressive wars of the Empire. The French president, the
British prime minister, the “president” of Georgia, and the rest are
merely functionaries of the American Empire. The puppet rulers
routinely sell out the interests and welfare of their peoples in behalf
of American hegemony. And they are well rewarded for their service. One
year out of office former British prime minister Tony Blair had a net
worth of $30 million.
In his war against Libya, Obama has taken America
one step further into Caesarism. Obama did Bush one step better and did
not even bother to get congressional authorization for his attack on
Libya. Obama claimed that his moral authority trumped the US
Constitution. The hypocrisy reeks. How the public stands it, I do not
know:
“To brush aside America’s responsibility as a
leader and--more profoundly--our responsibilities to our fellow human
beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we
are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other
countries. The United States of America is different. And as president,
I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before
taking action.”
This from the Great Moral Leader who every day
murders civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia and
now Libya and who turns a blind eye when “the great democracy in the
Middle East,” Israel, murders more Palestinians.
The American president, whose drones and air force
slaughter civilians every day of the year went on to say Libya stands
alone in presenting the world with “the prospect of violence on a
horrific scale.” Obviously, Obama thinks that one million dead Iraqis,
four million displaced Iraqis, and an unknown number of murdered Afghans
is just a small thing.
The rest of Obama’s speech showed a person more
capable of DoubleSpeak and DoubleThink than Big Brother and the denizens
of George Orwell’s 1984.
Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant
Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has
just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at:
[email protected]
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03292011.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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