Paul Craig Roberts : Off-Base or On-Target ?

August 9, 2014, OpEdNews Washington Threatens The World   By Paul Craig Roberts Washington does not accept law, neither domestic nor international, as a constraint on its actions. Washington is "exceptional, indispensable." No one else counts. No law, no Constitution, and no humane consideration has authority to constrain Washington's will. In its claims Washington surpasses those of the Third Reich. The consequence of Washington's reckless and irresponsible political and military interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria has been to unleash evil. The various sects that lived in peace under the rule of Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and Assad are butchering one another, and a new group, ISIS, is in the process of creating a new state out of parts of Iraq and Syria. The turmoil brought into the Middle East by the Bush and Obama regimes has meant death and displacement for millions, and untold future deaths. As I write 40,000 Iraqis are stranded on a mountain top without water awaiting death at the hands of ISIS, a creation of US meddling. The reality in the Middle East stands in vast contradiction to the stage-managed landing of George W. Bush on the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln where Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" on May 1, 2003. The mission that Washington accomplished was to wreck the Middle East and the lives of millions of people and to destroy America's reputation in the process. Thanks to the demonic neoconservative Bush regime, today America is regarded by the rest of the world as the greatest threat to world peace. The Clinton regime's attack on Serbia set the pattern. Bush upped the ante with Washington's naked aggression against Afghanistan, which Washington clothed in Orwellian language -- "Operation Enduring Freedom." Washington brought ruin, not freedom, to Afghanistan. After 13 years of blowing up the country, Washington is now withdrawing, the "superpower" having been defeated by a few thousand lightly armed Taliban, but leaving a wasteland behind for which Washington will accept no responsibility. Another source of endless Middle East turmoil is Israel whose theft of Palestine is Washington-enabled. In the middle of Israel's latest attack on civilians in Gaza, the US Congress passed resolutions in support of Israel's war crimes and voted hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for Israel's ammunition. Here we witness Great Moral America 100 percent in support of unambiguous war crimes against essentially defenseless people. When Israel murders women and children, Washington calls it "Israel's right to defend their own country" -- a country that Israel stole from Palestinians -- but when Palestinians retaliate Washington calls it "terrorism." By supporting Israel, declared to be a terrorist state by a few moral governments that still exist, and accused of war crimes by the UN General Secretary, Washington is in violation of its own laws against supporting terrorist states. Of course, Washington itself is the leading terrorist state. Therefore, it is illegal under US law for Washington to support itself. Washington, however, does not accept law, neither domestic nor international, as a constraint on its actions. Washington is "exceptional, indispensable." No one else counts. No law, no Constitution, and no humane consideration has authority to constrain Washington's will. In its claims Washington surpasses those of the Third Reich. As horrific as Washington's recklessness toward the Middle East is, Washington's recklessness toward Russia is many orders of magnitude greater. Washington has convinced nuclear armed Russia that Washington is planning a nuclear first strike. In response, Russia is beefing up its nuclear forces and testing US air defense reactions. It is difficult to imagine a more irresponsible act than to convince Russia that Washington intends to hit Russia with a preemptive first strike. One of Putin's advisers has explained to the Russian media Washington's first strike intentions, and a member of the Russian Duma has made a documented presentation of Washington's first strike intentions. By marshaling the evidence, I have pointed out in my columns that it is impossible for Russia to avoid this conclusion. China is aware that China faces the same threat from Washington. China's response to Washington's war plans against China was to demonstrate how China's nuclear forces would be used in response to Washington's attack on China to destroy the US. China made this public, hoping to create opposition among Americans to Washington's war plans against China. Like Russia, China is a rising country that does not need war in order to succeed. The only country on earth that needs war is Washington, and that is because Washington's goal is the neoconservative one of exercising hegemony over the world. Prior to the Bush and Obama regimes, every previous US president went to great efforts to avoid telegraphing any nuclear threat. US war doctrine was careful to keep nuclear weapons limited to retaliation in the event the US suffered a nuclear attack. The purpose of nuclear forces was to prevent the use of such weapons. The reckless George W. Bush regime elevated nuclear weapons to preemptive first use, thus destroying the constraint placed on the use of nuclear weapons. The overriding purpose of the Reagan administration was to end the cold war and, thereby, the threat of nuclear war. The George W. Bush regime, together with the Obama regime's demonization of Russia, have overturned President Reagan's unique achievement and made nuclear war likely. When the incompetent Obama regime decided to overthrow the democratically elected government in Ukraine and install a puppet government of Washington's choosing, the Obama State Department, run by neoconservative ideologues, forgot that the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine consist of former Russian provinces that were attached to the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic by Communist Party leaders when Ukraine and Russia were part of the same country -- the Soviet Union. When the Russophobic stooges that Washington installed in Kiev demonstrated in word and deed their hostility to Ukraine's Russian population, the former Russian provinces declared their desire to return to mother Russia. This is not surprising, nor is it something that can be blamed on Russia. Crimea succeeded in returning to Russia, where Crimea resided since the 1700s, but Putin, hoping to defuse the propaganda war that Washington was mounting against him did not accept the pleas from the other former Russian provinces. Consequently, Washington's stooges in Kiev felt free to attack the protesting provinces and have been following the Israeli policy of attacking civilian populations, civilian residences, and civilian infrastructure. The presstitute Western media ignored the facts and accused Russia of invading and annexing parts of Ukraine. This lie is comparable to the lies that US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in behalf of the criminal Bush regime, lies that Colin Powell later apologized for to no avail as Iraq had been destroyed by his lies. When the Malaysian airliner was destroyed, before any facts were known Russia was blamed. The British media was especially primed to blame Russia almost the instant it was known the airliner was downed. I heard the BBC's gross misrepresentation and blatant lies on American National Public Radio, and only the Daily Mail's propagandistic account was worse. The entire "news" event has the appearance of orchestration prior to the event, which, of course, suggests that Washington was behind it. The airliner deaths became all important for Washington's propaganda war. The 290 casualties are unfortunate, but they are a small fraction of the deaths that Israel was inflicting on Palestinians at the same moment without provoking any protests from Western governments, as distinct from Western peoples in the streets, people whose protests were conveniently suppressed for Israel by Western security forces. Washington used the downing of the airliner, which probably was Washington's responsibility, as an excuse for another round of sanctions on Russia, and to pressure its European puppets to join the sanctions with sanctions of their own, which Washington's EU puppets did. Washington relies on accusations and insinuations and refuses to release the evidence from the satellite photos, because the photos do not support Washington's lies. Facts are not permitted to interfere with Washington's demonization of Russia any more than facts interfered with Washington's demonization of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran. Twenty-two reckless and irresponsible US senators have introduced the "Russian Aggression Prevention Act of 2014," US Senate bill 2277, sponsored by Senator Bob Corker, who well represents in his ignorance and stupidity what appears to be the majority of the American population or the majority of voters in the state of Tennessee. Corker's bill is a mindless piece of legislation designed to start a war that would be likely to leave no survivors. Apparently, idiotic Americans will elect any fool to power. The belief that Russia is responsible for the downed Malaysian airliner has become fact in Western capitals despite the total absence of even a tiny scrap of evidence in behalf of the claim. Moreover, even it the accusation were true, is one airliner worth a World War? The UK Defense Committee has concluded that a broke and militarily impotent UK must "focus on the defense of Europe against Russia." The military spending drums, if not the war drums, are beating and the entire West has joined in. A militarily impotent Britain is going to defend Europe from a non-existent, although much proclaimed, attack from the Russian bear. US and NATO military dignitaries and the Pentagon chief are issuing Russia Threat Warnings based on alleged but non-existent Russian troop-buildups on Ukraine's border. According to the the Western Ministry of Propaganda if Russia defends the Russian populations in Ukraine from military attack from Washington's stooge government in Kiev, it is proof that Russia is the villain. Washington's propaganda campaign has succeeded in turning Russia into a threat. Polls show that 69 percent of Americans now regard Russia as a threat, and that the confidence of Russians in American leadership has vanished. Russians and their government observe the identical demonization of their country and their leader as they observed of Iraq and Saddam Hussein, of Libya and Gaddafi, of Syria and Assad, and of Afghanistan and the Taliban just prior to military assaults on these countries by the West. For a Russian, the safest conclusion from the evidence is that Washington intends war on Russia. It is my opinion that the irresponsibility and recklessness of the Obama regime is without precedent. Never before has the United States government or the government of any nuclear power gone to such great efforts to convince another nuclear power that that power was being set up for attack. It is difficult to imagine a more provocative act that more endangers life on earth. Indeed, the White House Fool has doubled up, convincing both Russia and China that Washington is planning a preemptive first strike on both. Republicans want to sue or to impeach Obama over relatively inconsequential issues, such as ObamaCare. Why don't Republicans want to impeach Obama over such a critical issue as subjecting the world to the risk of nuclear armageddon? The answer is that the Republicans are as crazed as the Democrats. Their leaders, such as John McCain and Lindsay Graham, are determined that "we stand up to the Russians!" Wherever one looks in American politics one sees crazed people, psychopaths and sociopaths who should not be in political office. Washington long ago gave up diplomacy. Washington relies on force and intimidation. The US government is utterly devoid of judgment. This is why polls show that the rest of the world regards the US government as the greatest threat to world peace. Today (August 8, 2014) Handelsblatt, Germany's Wall Street Journal, wrote in a signed editorial by the publisher: "The American tendency to move from verbal escalation to military escalation -- the isolation, demonization, and attacking of enemies -- has not proven effective. The last successful major military action the US conducted was the Normandy landing [in 1944]. Everything else -- Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan -- was a clear failure. Moving NATO units towards the Polish border with Russia and thinking about arming Ukraine is a continuation of relying on military means in the absence of diplomacy." Washington's puppet states -- all of Europe, Japan, Canada, and Australia -- enable Washington's unrivaled danger to the world by their support of Washington's agenda of exercising hegemony over the entire world. The 100th anniversary of World War I is upon us. And the folly that caused this war is being repeated. WWI destroyed a civilized Western world, and it was the work of a mere handful of scheming people. The result was Lenin, the Soviet Union, Hitler, the rise of American Imperialism, Korea, Vietnam, the military interventions that created ISIS, and now resurrected conflict between Washington and Russia that President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had ended. As Stephen Starr has pointed out on my website, if merely 10% of the nuclear weapons in the US and Russian arsenals are used, life on earth terminates. Dear readers, ask yourselves, when has Washington told you anything that was not a lie? Washington's lies have caused millions of casualties. Do you want to be a casualty of Washington's lies? Do you believe that Washington's lies and propaganda about the Malaysian airliner and Ukraine are worth risking life on earth? Who is so gullible that he cannot recognize that Washington's lies about Ukraine are like Washington's lies about Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, and Assad's use of chemical weapons? Do you think that the neoconservative influence that prevails in Washington, regardless of the political party in office, is too dangerous to be tolerated? Submitters Website: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/ Submitters Bio: Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente's Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments. His book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is available here. His latest book, How America Was Lost, has just been released and can be ordered here.