The White House is screaming like a stuck pig. WikiLeaks�
release of the Afghan War Documents �puts the lives of our soldiers and our
coalition partners at risk.�
What nonsense. Obama�s war puts the lives of American
soldiers at risk, and the craven puppet state behavior of �our partners� in
serving as US mercenaries is what puts their troops at risk.
Keep in mind that it was someone in the US military that
leaked the documents to WikiLeaks. This means that there is a spark of
rebellion within the Empire itself.
And rightly so. The leaked documents show that the US has
committed numerous war crimes and that the US government and military have lied
through their teeth in order to cover up the failure of their policies. These
are the revelations that Washington wants to keep secret.
If Obama cared about the lives of our soldiers, he would not
have sent them to a war, the purpose of which he cannot identify. Earlier in
his regime, Obama admitted that he did not know what the mission was in
Afghanistan. He vowed to find out what the mission was and to tell us, but he
never did. After being read the riot act by the military/security complex,
which recycles war profits into political campaign contributions, Obama simply
declared the war to be �necessary.� No one has ever explained why the war is
necessary.
The government cannot explain why the war is necessary,
because it is not necessary to the American people. Any necessary reason for
the war has to do with the enrichment of narrow private interests and with
undeclared agendas. If the agendas were declared and the private interests
being served identified, even the American sheeple might revolt.
The Obama regime has made war the business of America.
Escalation in Afghanistan has gone hand in hand with drone attacks on Pakistan
and the use of proxy forces to conduct wars in Pakistan and North Africa.
Currently, the US is conducting provocative naval exercises off the coasts of
China and North Korea and instigating war between Columbia and Venezuela in
South America. Former CIA director Michael Hayden declared on July 25 that an
attack on Iran seems unavoidable.
With the print and TV media captive, why doesn�t Washington
simply tell us that the country is at war without going to the trouble of war?
That way the munitions industry can lay off its workers and put the military
appropriations directly into profits. We could avoid the war crimes and wasted
lives of our soldiers.
The US economy and the well-being of Americans are being
sacrificed to the regime�s wars. The states are broke and laying off teachers.
Even �rich� California, formerly touted as �the seventh largest economy in the
world,� is reduced to issuing scrip and cutting its state workers� pay to the
minimum wage.
Supplemental war appropriations have become routine affairs,
but the budget deficit is invoked to block any aid to Americans -- but not to
Israel. On July 25 the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported that the US and
Israel had signed a multi-billion dollar deal for Boeing to provide Israel with
a missile system.
Americans can get no help out of Washington, but the US
ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, declared that Washington�s commitment to Israel�s
security is �not negotiable.� Washington�s commitment to California and to the
security of the rest of us is negotiable. War spending has run up the budget
deficit, and the deficit precludes any help for Americans.
With the US bankrupting itself in wars, America�s largest
creditor, China, has taken issue with America�s credit rating. The head of
China�s largest credit rating agency declared: �The US is insolvent and faces
bankruptcy as a pure debtor nation.�
On July 12, Niall Ferguson, an historian of empire, warned
that the American empire could collapse suddenly from weakness brought on by
its massive debts and that such a collapse could be closer than we think.
Deaf, dumb, and blind, Washington policymakers prattle on
about �thirty more years of war.�
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary U.S.
Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week,
Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E.
Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, Washington, D.C. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK
Press. He can be reached at PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com.