Who Rules America?
By Paul Craig Roberts
May 14, 2009 " -- -What do you suppose it
is like to be elected president of the United States only to find that your
power is restricted to the service of powerful interest groups?
A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups is paid
off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous speaking fees, and
a lucrative book contract. If he is young when he assumes office, like Bill
Clinton and Obama, it means a long life of luxurious leisure.
Fighting the special interests doesn't pay and doesn't succeed. On
April 30 the primacy of special over public interests was demonstrated yet
again. The Democrats' bill to prevent 1.7 million mortgage foreclosures
and, thus, preserve $300 billion in home equity by permitting homeowners to
renegotiate their mortgages, was defeated in the Senate, despite the 60-vote
majority of the Democrats. The banksters were able to defeat the bill 51 to
45.
These are the same financial gangsters whose unbridled greed and utter
irresponsibility have wiped out half of Americans' retirement savings, sent
the economy into a deep hole, and threatened the US dollar's reserve
currency role. It is difficult to imagine an interest group with a more
damaged reputation. Yet, a majority of "the people's representatives" voted
as the discredited banksters instructed.
Hundreds of billions of public dollars have gone to bail out the
banksters, but when some Democrats tried to get the Senate to do a mite for
homeowners, the US Senate stuck with the banks. The Senate's motto is:
"Hundreds of billions for the banksters, not a dime for homeowners."
If Obama was naive about well-intentioned change before the vote, he
no longer has this political handicap.
Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin acknowledged the voters' defeat
by the discredited banksters. The banks, Durbin said, "frankly own the
place."
It is not difficult to understand why. Among those who defeated the
homeowners bill are senators Jon Tester (Mont), Max Baucus (Mont), Blanche
Lincoln (Ark), Ben Nelson (Neb), Many Landrieu (La), Tim Johnson (SD), and
Arlan Specter (Pa). According to reports, the banksters have poured a half
million dollars into Tester's campaign funds. Baucus has received $3.5
million; Lincoln $1.3 million; Nelson $1.4 million; Landrieu $2 million;
Johnson $2.5 million; Specter $4.5 million.
The same Congress that can't find a dime for homeowners or health care
appropriates hundreds of billions of dollars for the military/security
complex. The week after the Senate foreclosed on American homeowners, the
Obama "change" administration asked Congress for an additional $61 billion
dollars for the neoconservatives' war in Iraq and $65 billion more for the
neoconservatives' war in Afghanistan. Congress greeted this request with a
rousing "Yes we can!"
The additional $126 billion comes on top of the $533.7 billion
"defense" budget for this year. The $660 billion--probably a low-ball
number--is ten times the military spending of China, the second most
powerful country in the world.
How is it possible that "the world's only superpower" is threatened by
the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan? How can the US be a superpower if it is
threatened by countries that have no military capability other than a
guerilla capability to resist invaders?
These "wars" are a hoax designed to enrich the US armaments industry
and to infuse the "security forces" with police powers over American
citizenry.
Not a dime to prevent millions of Americans from losing their homes,
but hundreds of billions of dollars to murder Muslim women and children and
to create millions of refugees, many of whom will either sign up with
insurgents or end up as the next wave of immigrants into America.
This is the way the American government works. And it thinks it is a
"city on the hill, a light unto the world."
Americans elected Obama because he said he would end the gratuitous
criminal wars of the Bush brownshirts, wars that have destroyed America's
reputation and financial solvency and serve no public interest. But once in
office Obama found that he was ruled by the military/security complex. War
is not being ended, merely transferred from the unpopular war in Iraq to the
more popular war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Obama, in violation of Pakistan's
sovereignty, continues to attack "targets" in Pakistan. In place of a war
in Iraq, the military/security complex now has two wars going in much more
difficult circumstances.
Viewing the promotion gravy train that results from decades of
warfare, the US officer corps has responded to the "challenge to American
security" from the Taliban. "We have to kill them over there before they
come over here." No member of the US government or its numerous well-paid
agents has ever explained how the Taliban, which is focused on Afghanistan,
could ever get to America. Yet this hyped fear is sufficient for the public
to support the continuing enrichment of the military/security complex, while
American homes are foreclosed by the banksters who have destroyed the
retirement prospects of the US population..
According to Pentagon budget documents, by next year the cost of the
war against Afghanistan will exceed the cost of the war against Iraq.
According to a Nobel prize-winning economist and a budget expert at Harvard
University, the war against Iraq has cost the American taxpayers $3
trillion, that is, $3,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred
future costs, such as caring for veterans.
If the Pentagon is correct, then by next year the US government will
have squandered $6 trillion dollars on two wars, the only purpose of which
is to enrich the munitions manufacturers and the "security" bureaucracy.
The human and social costs are dramatic as well and not only for the
Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani populations ravaged by American bombs. Dahr
Jamail reports that US Army psychiatrists have concluded that by their third
deployment, 30 percent of American troops are mental wrecks. Among the
costs that reverberate across generations of Americans are elevated rates of
suicide, unemployment, divorce, child and spousal abuse, drug and alcohol
addiction, homelessness and incarceration. http://www.truthout.org/051209J?n
In the Afghan "desert of death" the Obama administration is
constructing a giant military base. Why? What does the internal politics
of Afghanistan have to do with the US?
What is this enormous waste of resources that America does not have
accomplishing besides enriching the American munitions industry?
China and to some extent India are the rising powers in the world.
Russia, the largest country on earth, is armed with a nuclear arsenal as
terrifying as the American one. The US dollar's role as reserve currency,
the most important source of American power, is undermined by the budget
deficits that result from the munition corporations' wars and the bankster
bailouts.
Why is the US making itself impotent fighting wars that have nothing
whatsoever to do with is security, wars that are, in fact, threatening its
security?
The answer is that the military/security lobby, the financial
gangsters, and AIPAC rule. The American people be damned.
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http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22611.htm
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