Paul Craig Roberts
Posted on 06/01/2006 5:34:00 PM PDT by Calif Conservative
Evil in Our Government
Paul Craig Roberts Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Is the Bush regime a state sponsor of terrorism?
A powerful case can be made that it is.
In the past three years, the Bush regime has murdered tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and an unknown number of Afghan ones.
U.S. Marines, members of our finest and proudest military force, are under criminal investigation for breaking into Iraqi homes and murdering entire families. In an unprecedented event, Gen. Michael Hagee, the Marine Corps commandant, has found it necessary to fly to Iraq to tell our best-trained troops to stop murdering civilians.
Hagee told the U.S. Marines: "We do not employ force just for the sake of employing force. We use lethal force only when justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful."
The war criminals in the Bush regime have dismissed the murders as "collateral damage," but they are in fact murders. Otherwise, there would be no criminal investigations and the Marine commandant would not be burdened with the embarrassment of having to fly to Iraq to lecture U.S. Marines on the lawful use of force.
The criminal Bush regime has now murdered more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein. The Bush regime is also responsible for 20,000 U.S. casualties (dead, maimed for life and wounded).
Bush damns the "axis of evil." But who has the "axis of evil" attacked? Iran has attacked no one. North Korea has attacked no country for more than a half-century. Iraq attacked Kuwait a decade and a half ago, apparently after securing permission from the U.S. ambassador.
Isn't the real axis of evil Bush-Blair-Olmert? George Bush and Tony Blair have attacked two countries, slaughtering their citizens. Israel's Ehud Olmert is urging them on to attack a third country, Iran.
Where does the danger to the world reside? In Iran, a small religious country where the family is intact and the government is constrained by religious authority and ancient traditions, or in the United States, where propaganda rules and the powerful executive branch has removed itself from accountability by breaking the constitutional restraints on its power?
Why is the U.S. superpower orchestrating fear of puny Iran?
The U.S. government has spent the past half-century interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, overthrowing or assassinating their chosen leaders and imposing its puppets on foreign peoples.
To what country has Iran done this, or Iraq, or North Korea?
Americans think that they are the salt of the earth. The hubris that comes from this self-righteous belief makes Americans blind to the evil of their leaders. How can American leaders be evil when Americans are so good and so wonderful?
How many Serbs were slaughtered by American bombs released from high above the clouds, and for what reason? Who even remembers the propagandistic lies that the Clinton administration told us about why we absolutely had to drop bombs on the Serbs?
Wasn't it evil for the United States to bomb Iraq for a decade and to embargo medicines for children? When U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked if she thought an embargo that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was justified, she replied, "Yes."
The former terrible tyrant ruler of Iraq, Hussein, is on trial for killing 150 people. The U.S. government murdered 500,000 Iraqi children prior to Bush's invasion. When the U.S. government murders people, whether Serbs, Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, or Iraqi women and children, it is "collateral damage." But we put Hussein on trial for putting down rebellions.
Gentle reader, do you believe that the Bush regime will not shoot you down in the streets if you have a rebellion?
More likely he's dating David Brock.
I ceased reading these 3 sites about 5 years ago as it became clearer that they had collectively embarked on a path of detachment from reality.
The 'Antiwar.com' website was always nutty, even under the 'Toon and anyone citing it as authority is automatically serving notice on you that they can't be taken seriously.
The other 3 sites I mentioned above are closing in on it fast, however.
Having verified that this is a legitimate column, I can only conclude that Roberts has either gone insane, or has had a "David Brock-style" conversion due to Lord-only-knows-what skeletons in his own closet.
Yeah, defend Iran you assclown.
Seconded. High time to dump this lunatic.
Paul Craig Roberts is a former Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, and a prolific and popular journalist.
He is considered part of the paleoconservative wing of conservatism. In recent years, he has become increasingly known as an opponent of government regulated "free-trade agreements" like NAFTA, and the World Trade Organization, and a critic of the administration of George W. Bush. He is opposed to the Iraq War, and writes frequently on the subject.
He is a member of the controversial VDARE.com editorial collective, an internet group that favors immigration reduction. His writings frequently appear on Antiwar.com, on Lew Rockwell's web site, and Alexander Cockburn's left-wing site CounterPunch.
During the 2004 Presidential Election in the U.S., Roberts endorsed the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, for president. On May 18, 2005, in response to the publication of the "Downing Street memo," Roberts wrote an article calling for Bush's impeachment for allegedly lying to Congress about the case for war.
Of the 9/11 Commission Report, Roberts wrote in 2006, "One would think that if the report could stand analysis, there would not be a taboo against calling attention to the inadequacy of its explanations." (see Criticisms of the 9/11 Commission Report).
Roberts is also a critic of a potential Bush administration attack on Iran. In an August 15, 2005 article, he states "Bush...dismisses all facts and assurances and is willing to attack Iran based on nothing but Israel's paranoia." and concludes the article with a more heated call for impeachment: "The Bush administration is insane. If the American people do not decapitate it by demanding Bush's impeachment, the Bush administration will bring about Armageddon."
Although his criticisms of Bush often align him with the political left, Roberts does not see himself as having changed sides. He continues to praise Ronald Reagan and to endorse many of Reagan's policies, arguing that "true conservatives" were the "first victims" of the Bush administration.
What are we doing in Iraq? Why the hell are we supposed to hang around biting our nails over whether or not the culturally retrograde Iraqi people have the sense to live under the rule of law? It's stupid. I didn't sign on for this, and neither, quite clearly, did Roberts or many other conservatives who understand how deepy UN-conservative Bush's Wilsonian policies are.
I want Osama's head on a platter. That would be an accomplishment for the administration, but, in over six years of trying and after hundreds of billions of dollars spent, they've been unable to deliver. I don't give a rat's backside about the Iraqi constitution or the so-called nascent democracy in that benighted country.
George Bush had better have some concrete successes to show for the foreign policy strategies he is responsible for, or he'll go down as one of the most failed presidents in American history.
Also notice the difference in tone in these excerpts that have Roberts' reaction to the 1993 Waco incident involving the Branch Davidians.
One could certainly argue that the Clinton administration violated the right to live of a whole bunch of American citizens, who have a right to live, and in fact, have a right to be kooks so long as they don't violate anybody else's rights.
But look at the relatively mild tone, almost professorial, in the Roberts' reaction regarding Waco. He merely discusses the Clinton barbecue at Waco in the context of constitutional rights.
Roberts spews nothing like the poisonous invective he launches regularly at the GW Bush admininistration.
The Bush Family is powerful, as much of an American dynasty as the Kennedy family. That's neither good nor bad, it just is a fact. But it is also likely that along the way, the Bushes have angered more than a few people.
Even so, professional disagreements are no excuse for someone like Roberts to be an America hater when a Bush is in office, but merely doing a constitutional tut-tut when Clinton is in office, and is responsible for Janet Reno roasting innocent civilians, and crushing them with tanks.
Columnist Paul Craig Roberts wrote of the true concerns underlying the government's action: "If the Branch Davidians could hold out, others might get the same idea. Heavens, people might stop paying their taxes. There was too much rebellion in the defiance of authority.
Below are the Roberts' excerpts I found via the Web regarding Waco:
(They are all from April 1993)
*****
Similarly, Paul Craig Roberts wrote in his April 22, 1993, syndicated column, "If Rodney King's civil rights were violated, what happened in Waco?. . .If a billy club is excessive force, what is a tank?"
*****
*****
As syndicated columnist Paul Craig Roberts noted: "the tragedy near Waco happened precisely because of federal laws regulating gun ownership. T he Branch Davidians hadn't assaulted anyone. They lived peacefully in the community. Except for federal gun laws they would all still be alive. It is the liberal premise that gun ownership is evil, should be illegal or at least heavily regulated, and that has created an atmoshpere in which the BATF like an unthinking bully, can run roughshod over Americans' constitutional rights, due process, and freedom."
*****
9/11/2001 was less than 5 years ago.
I used to read Vdare.com pretty regularly too, but they've gone the way of the white moonbat too, most of them.
Let's take these guys like Brock and Roberts and put them in Iraq, and see how long it is before they wet their pants, and come running home to mama.
Cowards!
More of your descent into madness.
beckett, you, like Roberts, were once a sane conservative who could be trusted in public.
Alas, given your isolationist populism, that is no longer the case.
After reading his article, I think you got the "progressive" part right.
There are so many obvious lies in this article, you hardly know when to start. I don't know of anybody in the Bush administration who have referred to the victims in this particular case as collateral damage. (Quite the opposite as a matter of fact.) He holds Bush responsible for the supposed hundreds of thousands of children that allegedly starved to death under UN sanctions, while never mentioning the billions that Hussein was siphoning off and using to pay off the French etc. He also limits those deaths attributable to Sadam Hussein to the 150 he is presently on trial for, but blames Bush for every child blown up by a terrorist. He also fails to acknowledge the thousands of people that have not had body parts cut off, been fed through shredders feet first, or just lined up and shot, since Hussein was apprehended.
Why is it the most venemous of the hate mongers are the first to throw intelectual dishonesty out the window.
sNoozeMax...I know you not.
But it is clear from this and other articles he has written that he has gone over to the dark side. With roughly a quarter million troops "in theater," it is a near certainty that occasionally a squad, or even part of a squad, will commit acts that are forbidden. And when that has apparently happened, there will be an appropriate military trial, and appropriate penalties on those found guilty in that trial.
Because of this, he writes this policy drivel which will be quoted ad nauseum by those who want to kill Americans, and far from abiding by the Law of War, violate it in numerous ways including hiding among civilians and attacking civilians.
General Wesley Clark was asked three times on Neil Cavuto's Show this afternoon about the flaming hypocrisy of the international and US media in running banner headlines on this (apparent) aberration by American troops, while giving no such press treatment of the deliberate choice of the enemy to slaughter civilians at every opportunity.
Three times Clark ducked the question and changed the subject. He earned, again, his nickname of "Weaselly."
P.S. info. My primary is over, but because of legal and ethical problems, the incumbent may withdraw/be forced out. He is also losing in the latest poll (5/28) to the Democrat challenger. I seek to be the replacement nominee. For more information see my website. I still need your help.
Congressman Billybob
Please do not tell that this moron is considered to be a conservative icon.
Paul Craig Roberts
Not at all, look at Japan and Germany.
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