Leave Now .. Departing Iraq (blistering editorial by Paul Roberts)

[RedEarth]

Leave Now
Departing Iraq
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

snip.....

We have run out of troops and money, the rest of the world has run out of patience with our stupidity, and the upper regions of the Bush administration may be crumbling under pressure of a prosecutor's investigations and eroding public support.

Bush administration neocons such as Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby, along with their cheerleaders at Fox "News", the Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal editorial page, National Review, and the New York Times' Judith Miller will go down in history as the architects and enablers of the greatest strategic blunder in American history. The neocon dream of conquering the Middle East for Israel and destroying Islam as a force is now in history's trash heap of failed adventures along with such miscalculations as Hitler's march into Russia and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

snip........

In seeking to get to the bottom of the Valerie Plame affair, federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is bringing us back to the Big Question: Who cooked the books in order to justify the invasion of Iraq? Was the ringleader Vice President Cheney? Was it Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his neocon cadres? Or was it President Bush himself? What role did Condi "Mushroom Cloud" Rice play in the orchestrated deceit of Congress and the American public?

In the American system, high government officials, no matter how powerful their positions, are not the law. They are subject to the law, which they are sworn to uphold, and when they violate the law they are held accountable.

The US invasion of Iraq was illegal and unwarranted. Those who conspired to bring this war about must be identified and punished. Otherwise the United States will sink from the rule of law into the rule of men.

more.....

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts07282005.html

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: [e-mail]

[judy]

1. Good article...Thanks for posting it.

It's hard to keep track of who all these guys named "Roberts" are :)

[starroute]

2. This one is a Paleocon

I've checked him out some. His anti-war rhetoric is stirring, but he has racist connections and much of his dislike of the neocons seems to be based on anti-semitism.

It isn't a bad thing to have people like him saying this stuff, but we need to remain wary of them.

[0007]

4. ...such as?

[jbfam4]

3. last two paragraphs are excellent

The US invasion of Iraq was illegal and unwarranted. Those who conspired to bring this war about must be identified and punished. Otherwise the United States will sink from the rule of law into the rule of men.

A true patriot does not confuse government with country. A patriot's loyalty is to his country, and loyalty to country requires holding government accountable.

And this coming from someone who worked in the Regan administration.

[PATRICK]

5. The Tyranny of Bad Ideology

would be a good title of a book these honest libertarians or conservatives should read. They have been forced to see the ultimate consequences of everything they fought for.

I'll use the Hitler example purely as an analogy of course. Hitler was touted by the right here at home until- whoops- pearl harbor and Germany declaring war against us. Some like the Bushes didn't stop their monetary support on a dime either. But he was an enemy and a monster and most importantly- a loser.

With modest, cleaner tactics, a little more real honey, more practical wisdom- Bush would still have all the support of these people for the exact same agenda. Some grumbling from glutted over sated party faithful in a mutual feast of arrogance perhaps.

To continue the analogy though. After the war(WWII) not only were all RW sins forgiven and forgotten, but they themselves conducted a purge that by simple justice or sheer patriotic revenge should have been aimed at themselves and major US moneylenders and corporations. They boomeranged back to the fascist days when the anti-Communist crusade(used by Hitler to enlist jingoistic support) and bypassed the days of temporarily defeated fascism. The democrats have been on the run ever since fearful of their weird alliance of Southern conservatives and New Deal liberals. Maybe they wanted to cling to their antebellum roots that survived the post Civil War Radical Repugs in electoral limbo for decades. In the end it is the liberals waiting decades while the wiser yellow dogs jumped ship to their putative ancient enemies.

I hear much of rage at blunders and the ruining of the great strategies, of the stain on the oil-soaked cloaks of the righteous. Gingrich was furious too that Bush was blowing their advantages. But much of the reason that the show goes on is because of the world this ideology stole. Give it all up, Mr. Roberts or yours is just a sour curmudgeon voice, an honest agent, an insider sucker who will not even drag his own chains honestly and despairingly like the ghost of Jacob Marley.