26 August 2008
Calamity in the Name of Hegemony
Is War With Russia on the Agenda?
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08262008.html
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Thinking about the massive failure of the US media to report
truthfully is sobering. The United States, bristling with nuclear
weapons and pursuing a policy of world hegemony, has a population that
is kept in the dark--indeed brainwashed--about the most important and
most dangerous events of our time.
The power of the Israel Lobby is an important component of keeping
Americans in the dark. Recently I watched a documentary that
demonstrates the control that the Israel Lobby exercises over
Americans’ view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The documentary
is available here.
As a result of the US media’s one-sided coverage, few Americans are
aware that for decades Israel has been ethnically cleansing
Palestinians from their homes and lands under protection of America’s
veto in the United Nations. Instead, the dispossessed Palestinians are
portrayed as mindless terrorists who attack innocent Israel.
If one reads Israeli newspapers, such as Haaretz, or publications from
Israeli organizations, such as the Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions, one gets a radically different view of the situation than
the propagandistic version delivered by US media and evangelical
pulpits.
Most Americans know of the 2000 attack by Muslim terrorists on the USS
Cole in Aden harbor that resulted in 17 dead and 39 wounded American
sailors. But few have heard of Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty
that left 34 American sailors dead and 174 wounded. Pressured by the
Israel Lobby, President Johnson ordered Admiral McCain, father of the
Republican presidential nominee, to cover up the attack. To this day
there never has been a congressional investigation.
The failure of the American media is again evident in the coverage of
the Georgian-Russian conflict. The US media presented the conflict as
a Russian invasion of Georgia, whereas in actual fact the American and
Israeli trained and equipped Georgian military launched a sneak attack
to kill and to drive the Russian population out of South Ossetia, a
separatist province.
Russian peacekeepers, together with Georgian ones, had been stationed
in South Ossetia since the early 1990s. On orders from Mikheil
Saakashvili, the American puppet “president” of Georgia, the Georgian
peacekeepers turned their weapons on the unsuspecting Russian
peacekeepers and murdered them.
This action by Saakashvili, elected with money from the
neoconservative National Endowment for Democracy, an election-rigging
tool of US hegemony, was a war crime. In truth, the Russians should
have hung Saakashvili, as he is far more guilty than was Saddam
Hussein. But it is Russia, not Saakashvili, that the US media has
demonized.
Americans have become perfect subjects for George Orwell’s Big
Brother. They sit stupidly in front of the TV news or the New York
Times or Washington Post and absorb the lies fed to them. What is
wrong with Americans? Why do they put up with it? Are Americans the
nation of sheep that Judge Andrew P. Napolitano says they are?
Americans flaunt “freedom and democracy” and live under a Ministry of
Propaganda.
Two decades ago, President Reagan reached agreement with Soviet
president Mikhail Gorbachev to end the dangerous cold war. But every
one of Reagan’s successors has sought to pick a new fight with Russia.
In violation of the agreement, NATO has been taken to Russia’s
borders, and the US is determined to put former constituent parts of
Russia herself into NATO. In an effort to neutralize Russia’s nuclear
deterrent and compromise her independence, the US is putting anti-
ballistic missile bases on Russia’s borders.
The gratuitously aggressive US military policy toward Russia will lead
to nuclear war. I am confident that if Americans elect John McCain, or
the Republicans steal another presidential election, there will be
nuclear war in the second decade of the 21st century. The neocon lies,
propaganda, macho flag-waving, and use of US foreign policy in the
interests of a few military-security firms, oil companies, and Israel
are all leading in that direction.
The November election is perhaps the last chance to avoid nuclear war.
But the opportunity might already have been missed. The Republicans
have chosen as their candidate one of the most ignorant warmongers
alive. The Democrats’ choice was between one of the most divisive
women in America and a man of mixed race with a funny name.
Considering American’s taste for war, the Democratic candidate could
fail to defeat the GOP war candidate.
Many Americans will vote against Obama because he is black. Why does
mixed ancestry confer the black label? If America’s population was
predominantly black, would Obama be considered white?
Race and propaganda are more likely to determine the outcome of the
November election than any awareness or consideration of real issues
by voters.
The real issues are suffocated by the media. The American middle class
is being destroyed by jobs offshoring and work visas for foreigners,
while the incomes of the super rich are soaring. The US dollar’s
reserve currency status is eroded. The US is massively in debt at home
and abroad. Health insurance is unaffordable for the vast majority of
the population. Injured veterans are being nickeled and dimed, while
Halliburton’s profits escalate. Americans are losing their homes,
while the US government bails out banks. Wars with Iran, Russia, and
China are being planned in order to secure US hegemony.
Americans no longer have a government that is for the people and by
the people. They have a government for and by special interests and an
insane ideology.
But Americans have war, which lets them take out all their
frustrations, resentments, and disappointments on “Muslim terrorists”
and “Russian aggressors.” Few Americans are disturbed that 1.25
million Iraqis and an unknown number of Afghans have died as a result
of American invasions based on Bush regime lies and deceptions. Even
Americans, like Senator Biden, Obama’s selection for vice president,
who understand that the wars are based on lies, still want the US to
win. So, it was all a mistake and a deception, but let’s win anyway
and keep on killing.
I know people who still complain that the US did not nuke North
Vietnam. When I ask why Vietnam should have been nuked, they reply,
“if we had nuked them we would have won.”
What would America have won? The answer is world loathing and the loss
of the cold war.
For many Americans, war is like a sports contest in which they take
vicarious pleasure and cheer on their side to victory. Millions of
Americans are still bitter that “the liberal media” and war protesters
caused America to lose the Vietnam war, and they are determined that
this won’t happen again. These Americans have no realization that
there was no more reason for the US to be fighting in Vietnam 40 years
ago than to be fighting today in Iraq and Afghanistan or tomorrow in
Iran.
Obama, if elected, is no guarantee against nuclear war. Obama has
shown that he is as much under the Israel Lobby’s thumb as McCain.
Obama’s foreign affairs advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is not a neocon,
but he was born in Warsaw, Poland, and has the Pole’s animosity toward
Russia. The Bush administration has already changed US war doctrine to
permit preemptive nuclear attack. With the US government determined to
ring Russia with puppet states and military bases, war is inevitable.
Presidential appointees face confirmation in the Senate. Any of
Obama’s appointees who might be out of step with plans for US and
Israeli hegemony could expect opposition from large corporations and
the Israel Lobby. There is no assurance that an Obama administration
would not be positioned on “the issues” by the same special interests
that have positioned the Bush administration.
Americans are filled with hubris, not with knowledge. They have no
awareness of the calamity that their government’s pursuit of hegemony
is bringing to themselves and to life on earth.
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. He can be reached at:
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Neocons Put at US at Risk for Nuclear War with Russia:
http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot....clear-war.html
PNAC NeoCon Agenda puts US at Risk of War with Russia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G-of... =0&playnext=1
Here is a tiny URL for the above one:
http://tinyurl.com/6g8zzc
Don't Let the Neocon Agenda Get US into Wider Middle East War (Click
on the pic of Joe Biden at the following URL to access the youtube and
take a look at the comments section at the bottom there as well):
http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot....t-us-into.html
Here is a tiny URL for the above one:
http://tinyurl.com/593tgg
Warnings to Russia from Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa.../08/26/russia/
And None Dare Call It Treason—McCain Advisor's Georgia Connection
http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=94474
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