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Will Republicans Destroy
Themselves Before They Destroy America?
By Paul Craig Roberts
05/23/07 "ICH"
-- -- As everyone except for a dwindling band of Bush
supporters now knows, the US is in a terrible situation in Iraq
from which it cannot extract itself. For Bush and Cheney, their
own pride and delusion are more compelling than US casualties,
the destruction of Iraq and its people, and the inflaming of
sectarian strife and anti-American violence throughout the
Middle East.
Congress is complicit in the great strategic blunder. Republican
flag-wavers led Americans like lemmings into the abyss. The
Democrats have already abandoned the electorate that gave them
Control of Congress six months ago in the false hope that the
Democrats would corral the White House Moron and lead America
out of the abyss.
Like the Republicans, the Democrats serve the few special
interest groups that benefit, or believe that they benefit, from
the war. By now we all know who these groups are: the oil
industry, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby,
AIPAC. This contrived war, based on lies and deception, serves
no other interest.
There is no longer any question whatsoever, not a single sliver
of doubt, that Americans were deceived into this disastrous war.
The President of the United States lied to the American people,
as did the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, the
Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy
Secretary of Defense, the Undersecretary of Defense, as did
every neoconservative in the Bush administration, think tanks,
and media.
The fact that the American people were lied to and deceived does
not absolve them from blame. The lie was transparent, the logic
nonexistent, the true facts available and easy to discover.
America failed, because the American people failed. The American
people failed, because their self-righteousness and their hubris
made them easy saps for deception.
Even now after five years of a disastrous policy, Republicans
cannot accept the facts about the US invasion and failed
occupation of Iraq. At the recent “debate” between Republican
presidential candidates in South Carolina, US Representative Ron
Paul dared to tell the truth. Rep. Paul said that our
difficulties in the Middle East are “blowback” from our
government’s determined attempts to exercise hegemony over the
Middle East.
Republican presidential candidate Rudy Guiliani, a person who
sunk so low as to frame innocents while serving as US Attorney
in order to boost his name recognition [http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070510_giuliani.htm],
played the self-righteous card to extreme. How dare Ron Paul
suggest that US policy toward Muslims has anything whatsoever to
do with attacks on the US! With all the outrage he could muster,
Guiliani asked Rep. Paul “to withdraw that comment and tell us
that he didn’t really mean that.”
The thunderous applause from the Republican audience to
Guiliani’s put-down of the only honest person present underlines
that the Republican Party is incapable of leadership to end a
futile and lost war that under international standards is a war
crime, an unprovoked naked aggression based entirely on lies,
deception and a secret agenda.
At other times, the Republican audience applauded in support of
torture and greeted John McCain’s protest against the practice
with cold silence.
In the opening years of the 21st century the Republicans have
made it clear that they are willing to sacrifice the US
Constitution and Bill of Rights in order to wage “war against
terrorism.” This willingness makes the Republican Party a more
dangerous threat to Americans than Muslim terrorists. Muslim
terrorists cannot destroy our country’s reputation, trash our
civil liberties and wreck our system of accountable government,
but the Republican Party has done a thorough job of it.
The Democratic Party is complicit in the Republican Party’s
crimes, but unlike the Republican electorate, the Democratic
electorate does not support the occupation, the domestic police
state measures, and the Bush administration’s decision to send
more combat troops to Iraq. Although none of the current
frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination are
independent of the special interests that benefit from the war,
it might still be possible for a Democrat to emerge who will
represent the Democratic electorate instead of the special
interests.
Republican support for Bush’s contrived war against Iraq has
diminished the Republican party. Intelligent and decent people
have abandoned the party, which has morphed into a Brownshirt
Party with which fewer people are willing to be associated. The
diminished Republican ranks will make it difficult for the party
to steal any more elections.
If we are fortunate, Republicans will complete their
self-destruction before they extinguish the Constitution and
destroy America.
Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and 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 author or coauthor
of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolution (Harvard
University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments,
including the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy,
Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown
University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution,
Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous scholarly
journals and testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has
been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service Award and
the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal of
Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell
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