War With Russia Is On The Agenda
by Paul Craig Roberts
www.informationclearinghouse.info/,
August 26, 2008
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.
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