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War With Russia Is On The
Agenda
By Paul Craig Roberts
26/08/08 "ICH"
-- -- 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:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14055.htm
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.
Dr. Roberts was
Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan
Administration. He is a former Associate Editor of the Wall
Street Journal, a 16-year columnist for Business Week, and a
columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service and Creator’s
Syndicate in Los Angeles. He has held numerous university
professorships, 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 was awarded the
Legion of Honor by the President of France and the US
Treasury’s Silver Medal for “outstanding contributions to
the formulation of US economic policy.”
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