By Paul Craig Roberts
May 13, 2009
What do you suppose it is like to be elected president of the
United States only to find that your power is restricted
to the service of powerful interest groups?
A president who does a good job for the ruling interest groups
is paid off with remunerative corporate directorships, outrageous
speaking fees, and a lucrative book contract. If he is young
when he assumes office, like Bill Clinton and Obama, it means
a long life of luxurious leisure.
Fighting the special interests doesn't pay and doesn't succeed.
On April 30 the primacy of special over public interests was
demonstrated yet again. The Democrats' bill to prevent 1.7
million mortgage foreclosures and, thus, preserve $300 billion
in home equity by permitting homeowners to renegotiate their
mortgages, was defeated in the Senate, despite the 60-vote
majority of the Democrats. The banksters were able to defeat
the bill 51 to 45.
These are the same financial gangsters whose unbridled greed
and utter irresponsibility have wiped out half of Americans'
retirement savings, sent the economy into a deep hole, and
threatened the US dollar's reserve currency role. It is difficult
to imagine an interest group with a more damaged reputation.
Yet, a majority of "the people's representatives" voted
as the discredited banksters instructed.
Hundreds of billions of public dollars have gone to bail out
the banksters, but when some Democrats tried to get the Senate
to do a mite for homeowners, the US Senate stuck with the banks.The
Senate's motto is: "Hundreds of billions for the banksters,
not a dime for homeowners."
If Obama was naive about well-intentioned change before the
vote, he no longer has this political handicap.
Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin acknowledged the voters'
defeat by the discredited banksters. The banks, Durbin said, "frankly
own the place."
It is not difficult to understand why. Among those who defeated
the homeowners bill are senators Jon Tester (Mont), Max Baucus
(Mont), Blanche Lincoln (Ark), Ben Nelson (Neb), ManyLandrieu
(La), Tim Johnson (SD), and Arlan Specter (Pa). According to
reports, the banksters have poured a half million dollars into
Tester's campaign funds. Baucus has received $3.5 million;
Lincoln $1.3 million; Nelson $1.4 million; Landrieu $2 million;
Johnson $2.5 million; Specter $4.5 million.
The same Congress that can't find a dime for homeowners or
health care appropriates hundreds of billions of dollars for
the military/security complex. The week after the Senate foreclosed
on American homeowners, the Obama "change" administration
asked Congress for an additional $61 billion dollars for the
neoconservatives' war in Iraq and $65 billion more for the
neoconservatives' war in Afghanistan. Congress greeted this
request with a rousing "Yes we can!"
The additional $126 billion comes on top of the $533.7 billion "defense" budget
for this year. The $660 billion--probably a low-ball number--is
ten times the military spending of China, the second most powerful
country in the world.
How is it possible that "the world's only superpower" is
threatened by the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan? How can the
US be a superpower if it is threatened by countries that have
no military capability other than a guerilla capability to
resist invaders?
These "wars" are a hoax designed to enrich the US
armaments industry and to infuse the "security forces" with
police powers over American citizenry.
Not a dime to prevent millions of Americans from losing their
homes, but hundreds of billions of dollars to murder Muslim
women and children and to create millions of refugees, many
of whom will either sign up with insurgents or end up as the
next wave of immigrants into America.
This is the way the American government works. And it thinks
it is a "city on the hill, a light unto the world."
Americans elected Obama because he said he would end the gratuitous
criminal wars of the Bush brownshirts, wars that have destroyed
America's reputation and financial solvency and serve no public
interest. But once in office Obama found that he was ruled
by the military/security complex. War is not being ended, merely
transferred from the unpopular war in Iraq to the more popular
war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Obama, in violation of Pakistan's
sovereignty, continues to attack "targets" in Pakistan.
In place of a war in Iraq, the military/security complex now
has two wars going in much more difficult circumstances.
Viewing the promotion gravy train that results from decades
of warfare, the US officer corps has responded to the "challenge
to American security" from the Taliban. "We have
to kill them over there before they come over here." No
member of the US government or its numerous well-paid agents
has ever explained how the Taliban, which is focused on Afghanistan,
could ever get to America. Yet this hyped fear is sufficient
for the public to support the continuing enrichment of the
military/security complex, while American homes are foreclosed
by the banksters who have destroyed the retirement prospects
of the US population..
According to Pentagon budget documents, by next year the cost
of the war against Afghanistan will exceed the cost of the
war against Iraq. According to a Nobel prize-winning economist
and a budget expert at Harvard University, the war against
Iraq has cost the American taxpayers $3 trillion, that is,
$3,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future
costs, such as caring for veterans.
If the Pentagon is correct, then by next year the US government
will have squandered $6 trillion dollars on two wars, the only
purpose of which is to enrich the munitions manufacturers and
the "security" bureaucracy.
The human and social costs are dramatic as well and not only
for the Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani populations ravaged by
American bombs. Dahr Jamail reports that US Army psychiatrists
have concluded that by their third deployment, 30 percent of
American troops are mental wrecks. Among the costs that reverberate
across generations of Americans are elevated rates of suicide,
unemployment, divorce, child and spousal abuse, drug and alcohol
addiction, homelessness and incarceration. <http://www.truthout.org/051209J?n>http://www.truthout.org/051209J?n
In the Afghan "desert of death" the Obama administration
is constructing a giant military base. Why? What does the internal
politics of Afghanistan have to do with the US?
What is this enormous waste of resources that America does
not have accomplishing besides enriching the American munitions
industry?
China and to some extent India are the rising powers in the
world. Russia, the largest country on earth, is armed with
a nuclear arsenal as terrifying as the American one. The US
dollar's role as reserve currency, the most important source
of American power, is undermined by the budget deficits that
result from the munition corporations' wars and the bankster
bailouts.
Why is the US making itself impotent fighting wars that have
nothing whatsoever to do with its security, wars that are,
in fact, threatening its security?
The answer is that the military/security lobby, the financial
gangsters, and AIPAC rule. The American people be damned.
-----
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.
Paul Craig Roberts can be emailed
here
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