[Marxism] A Reaganite skewers U.S. "policy"

[David Thorstad]

Counterpunch, August 19, 2008

/**/


  /*The Mindlessness is Total */


  Are You Ready for Nuclear War?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Pervez Musharraf, the puppet installed by the US to rule Pakistan in the 
interest of US hegemony, resigned August 18 to avoid impeachment. Karl 
Rove and the Diebold electronic voting machines were unable to control 
the result of the last election in Pakistan, the result of which gave 
Pakistanis a bigger voice in their government than America’s.

It was obvious to anyone with any sense -- which excludes the entire 
Bush Regime and almost all of the "foreign policy community -- that the 
illegal and gratuitous US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and 
Israel’s 2006 bombing of Lebanon civilians with US blessing, would 
result in the overthrow of America’s Pakistani puppet.

The imbecilic Bush Regime ensured Musharraf’s overthrow by pressuring 
their puppet to conduct military operations against tribesmen in 
Pakistani border areas, whose loyalties were to fellow Muslims and not 
to American hegemony. When Musharraf’s military operations didn’t 
produce the desired result, the idiotic Americans began conducting their 
own military operations within Pakistan with bombs and missiles. This 
finished off Musharraf. When the Bush Regime began its wars in the 
Middle East, I predicted, correctly, that Musharraf would be one victim. 
The American puppets in Egypt and Jordan may be the next to go.

Back during the Nixon years, my Ph.D. dissertation chairman, Warren 
Nutter, was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security 
Affairs. One day in his Pentagon office I asked him how the US 
government got foreign governments to do what the US wanted. "Money," he 
replied.

"You mean foreign aid?" I asked.

"No," he replied, "we just buy the leaders with money."

It wasn’t a policy he had implemented. He inherited it and, although the 
policy rankled with him, he could do nothing about it. Nutter believed 
in persuasion and that if you could not persuade people, you did not 
have a policy.

Nutter did not mean merely third world potentates were bought. He meant 
the leaders of England, France, Germany, Italy, all the allies 
everywhere were bought and paid for.

They were allies because they were paid. Consider Tony Blair. Blair’s 
own head of British intelligence told him that the Americans were 
fabricating the evidence to justify their already planned attack on 
Iraq. This was fine with Blair, and you can see why, with his 
multi-million dollar payoff once he was out of office.

The American-educated thug, Saakashkvili the War Criminal, who is 
president of Georgia, was installed by the US taxpayer funded National 
Endowment for Democracy, a neocon operation whose purpose is to ring 
Russia with US military bases, so that America can exert hegemony over 
Russia.

Every agreement that President Reagan made with Mikhail Gorbachev has 
been broken by Reagan’s successors. Reagan’s was the last American 
government whose foreign policy was not made by the Israeli-allied 
neoconservatives. During the Reagan years, the neocons made several runs 
at it, but each ended in disaster for Reagan, and he eventually drove 
them from his government.

Even the anti-Soviet Committee on the Present Danger regarded the 
neocons as dangerous lunatics. I remember the meeting when a member 
tried to bring the neocons into the committee, and old line American 
establishment representatives, such as former Treasury Secretary Douglas 
Dillon, hit the roof. The Committee on the Present Danger regarded the 
neocons as crazy people who would get America into a nuclear war with 
the Soviet Union. The neocons hated President Reagan, because he ended 
the cold war with diplomacy, when they desired a military victory over 
the Soviet Union.

Deprived of this, the neocons now want victory over Russia.

Today, Reagan is gone. The Republican Establishment is gone. There are 
no conservative power centers, only neoconservative power centers 
closely allied with Israel, which uses the billions of dollars funneled 
into Israeli coffers by US taxpayers to influence US elections and 
foreign policy.

The Republican candidate for president is a warmonger. There are no 
checks remaining in the Republican Party on the neocons’ proclivity for 
war. What Republican constituencies oppose war? Can anyone name one?

The Democrats are not much better, but they have some constituencies 
that are not enamored of war in order to establish US world hegemony. 
The Rapture Evangelicals, who fervently desire Armageddon, are not 
Democrats; nor are the brainwashed Brownshirts desperate to vent their 
frustrations by striking at someone, somewhere, anywhere.

I get emails from these Brownshirts and attest that their hate-filled 
ignorance is extraordinary. They are all Republicans, and yet they think 
they are conservatives. They have no idea who I am, but since I 
criticize the Bush Regime and America’s belligerent foreign policy, they 
think I am a "liberal commie pinko."

The only literate sentence this legion of fools has ever managed is: "If 
you hate America so much, why don’t you move to Cuba!"

Such is the current state of a Reagan political appointee in today’s 
Republican Party. He is a "liberal commie pinko" who should move to Cuba.

The Republicans will get us into more wars. Indeed, they live for war. 
McCain is preaching war for 100 years. For these warmongers, it is like 
cheering for your home team. Win at all costs. They get a vicarious 
pleasure out of war. If the US has to tell lies in order to attack 
countries, what’s wrong with that? "If we don’t kill them over there, 
they will kill us over here."

The mindlessness is total.

Nothing of real issues from the American press, which is about 
demonizing Russia and Iran, about the vice presidential choices as if it 
matters, about whether Obama being on vacation let McCain score too many 
points.

The mindlessness of the news reflects the mindlessness of the 
government, for which it is a spokesperson.

The American media do not serve American democracy or American 
interests. They serve the few people who exercise power.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the US and Israel made a run at 
controlling Russia and the former constituent parts of its empire. For 
awhile the US and Israel succeeded, but Putin put a stop to it.

Recognizing that the US had no intention of keeping any of the 
agreements it had made with Gorbachev, Putin directed the Russian 
military budget to upgrading the Russian nuclear deterrent. 
Consequently, the Russian army and air force lack the smart weapons and 
electronics of the US military.

When the Russian army went into Georgia to rescue the Russians in South 
Ossetia from the destruction being inflicted upon them by the American 
puppet Saakashvili, the Russians made it clear that if they were opposed 
by American troops with smart weapons, they would deal with the threat 
with tactical nuclear weapons.

The Americans were the first to announce preemptive nuclear attack as 
their permissible war doctrine. Now the Russians have announced the 
tactical use of nuclear weapons as their response to American smart weapons.

*It is obvious that American foreign policy, with its goal of ringing 
Russia with US military bases, is leading directly to nuclear war. Every 
American needs to realize this fact. The US government’s insane 
hegemonic foreign policy is a direct threat to life on the planet.*

Russia has made no threats against America. The post-Soviet Russian 
government has sought to cooperate with the US and Europe. Russia has 
made it clear over and over that it is prepared to obey international 
law and treaties. It is the Americans who have thrown international law 
and treaties into the trash can, not the Russians.

In order to keep the billions of dollars in profits flowing to its 
contributors in the US military-security complex, the Bush Regime has 
rekindled the cold war. As American living standards decline and the 
prospects for university graduates deteriorate, "our" leaders in 
Washington commit us to a hundred years of war.

If you desire to be poor, oppressed, and eventually vaporized in a 
nuclear war, vote Republican.

**

*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. 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307396061/counterpunchmaga> He 
can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com 
<mailto:PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com>

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