Paul Craig Roberts on the Iraq occupation

Paul Craig Roberts on the Iraq occupation

(MG) In the June 8, 2007 edition of Counterpunch, Paul Craig Roberts spotlights many of the criminal aspects of the Iraq invasion and occupation. His indictment of the American people (not merely the politicians) is trenchant. WE the people by now have sufficient information to understand the criminal nature of this illegal, immoral war. To the extent we do nothing about it, we are all complicit; we are all guilty.

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All the reasons President Bush gave us for his war are false. Bush said he invaded Iraq "to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people."

We now know that these were false claims. Disinformation about Iraq was produced by a special unit within the Pentagon run by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith. The unit operated outside the normal intelligence channels of the CIA and DIA. Its purpose was to create false intelligence to enable Bush to initiate war with Iraq.

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Millions of Americans have come to their own conclusions about the reasons for Bush's invasion:

(1) Oil: the US government wants to hold on to power by expanding its control over oil, and Bush and Cheney want to reward their oil company cronies.

(2) Military-security complex: Police agencies favor war as a means of expanding their power, and military industries favor war as a means of expanding their profits.

(3) Neoconservative ideology: Neocons' believe in "American exceptionalism" and claim that America's virtue gives the US government the right and the obligation to impose US hegemony on the rest of the world, especially in the Middle East where independent Muslim states object to Israel's theft of Palestine.

(4) Karl Rove: Rove used the "war president" role to rescue Bush from attack by Democrats as an illegitimate president elected by one vote of the US Supreme Court.

(5) American self-righteousness over 9/11 and lust for revenge.

(MG) There's quite a bit to this, IMO. "Somebody has to pay" my cousin's husband (former U.S. air force officer) told me, prior to March, 2003.

All of these reasons came together to make a cruel war on an innocent people.

There may be other reasons about which we know not.

As it is now recognized ... every reason [given] for the war is false or illegitimate, the question is: ... There were no weapons of mass destruction, no connections to al Qaeda, and Bush has installed a puppet Iraqi government that cannot venture outside the heavily fortified and US protected "green zone." The Iraqi government governs nothing.

War without cause is murder, not war.

That the American people and their elected representatives continue to tolerate a war that has killed and maimed thousands of their own soldiers, destroyed the infrastructure of a country, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and created 4 million refugees for no known reason raises serious questions about the morals of the American people.

... have Americans become morally degenerate as commentators increasingly assert?

(MG) The opposite of love is indifference, and many Americans are indifferent to the suffering of the Iraqi and Afghani peoples. We are inured to their suffering.

One indication would be the response of presidential candidates to the gratuitous and failed war. ... All of the leading Republican presidential candidates openly and nonchalantly endorsed using nuclear weapons against Iran unless Iran abandons its right to enrich uranium under the non-proliferation treaty, to which Iran is a signatory (unlike nuclear-armed Israel, India, and US puppet Pakistan).

What is moral degeneracy if it is not using nuclear weapons to murder masses of innocent civilians and spread deadly radioactivity over vast areas merely in order to force a country to do as we order? If this isn't barbarism, what is barbarism?

Do the American people realize that the frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination are monsters who want to murder people who have done us no harm?

After five years of war that has achieved no noble purpose, no valid aim, indeed, no aim at all except perhaps Osama bin Laden's aim of stirring up uncontrollable strife in the Middle East, how can Republicans cheer for candidates who preach a wider war and the use of nuclear weapons against defenseless people?

(MG) But the three front-running Democratic candidates are all uniform in their position re: Iran -- "all cards are on the table" (which of course includes bombing, invasion, war, and presumably the nuclear option). THIS is horrifying beyond words.

Is the approval lavished on Republican presidential candidates, who are willing to use nuclear weapons as means of terrorizing Muslim peoples, an indication that the American people have morphed into inhuman monsters?

If not, what does it indicate? Ignorant fanaticism? Paranoia? Blind hatred? The belief that no one is of any value but Americans?

For six and one-half years the Bush Regime has relied on coercion, intimidation, war, and threats of war. Diplomacy and good will have been shunned. The regime's blatant warmongering has resurrected the nuclear arms race. China and Russia regard America's drive for world hegemony with great alarm. China has put nuclear ICBMs on mobile platforms to increase their survivability in event of an American attack. Russia has developed new multi-warhead ICBMs, which can penetrate any known missile defense, and new cruise missiles that Putin says will be targeted on Europe if the US persists in its aggressive military encirclement of Russia.

An administration that resurrects the threat of nuclear Armageddon ... is evil beyond compare.

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Posted by Mark Ganzer at 5:00 PM