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Thread ID: 16442 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2005-01-26
2005-01-26 05:42 | User Profile
War Without Endââ¬âBush Proclaims Jacobin Crusade
By Paul Craig Roberts
After listening to his inaugural speech, anyone who thinks President Bush and his handlers are sane needs to visit a psychiatrist. The hubris-filled megalomaniac in the Oval Office has promised the world war without end.
Bushââ¬â¢s crazy talk has even upset rah-rah Republicans. One Republican called Bushââ¬â¢s speech "God-drenched." It has begun to dawn on the formerly Grand Old Party that a bloodless coup has occurred and that Republicans have lost their party to Jacobins, who cloak themselves under the term "neoconservatives."
What is a Jacobin? Jacobins ushered in the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. The Jacobins saw themselves as virtuous champions of universalist principles that required them to impose "liberty, equality, fraternity" not merely on France by a reign of terror, but also on the rest of Europe by force of arms.
Unlike Americaââ¬â¢s Founding Fathers, who exhorted their countrymen to cultivate their own garden, Jacobins were not content with revolutionizing France. They were driven to revolutionize the world.
President Bushââ¬â¢s second inaugural speech is Jacobin to the core. It stands outside the American tradition. Declaring American values to be universalist principles, Bush promised to use American power to spread democracy and to end tyranny everywhere on earth.
As one of Bushââ¬â¢s neocon puppetmasters, Robert Kagan, approvingly wrote in the Washington Post on January 23,
"The goal of American foreign policy is now to spread democracy, for its own sake, for reasons that transcend specific threats. In short, Bush has unmoored his foreign policy from the war on terrorism." [A Higher Realism]
Michael Gerson, the Jacobin White House speechwriter who wrote Bushââ¬â¢s infamous "God-drenched speech," defensively insists that Bushââ¬â¢s wars will only last "a generation."
We can take comfort in that. According to the dictionary, a generation is "about 30 years," so it is only our children and grandchildren who will have to be sacrificed for "Bushââ¬â¢s historic mission."
Along about 2035 things should be calming down.
Whoever remains can begin to attack the $50 trillion national war debt.
Kagan calls Americaââ¬â¢s moral crusade against the world "the higher realism that Bush now proclaims." Gerson declares that Bushââ¬â¢s "methods are deeply realistic."
What is realistic about declaring weapons of mass destruction to exist where they do not exist?
What is realistic about assigning blame for September 11 where it does not belong?
What is realistic about destroying a secular state and creating a vast breeding ground for terrorists?
What is realistic about making Osama bin Laden an Islamic hero and shaking the foundations of Americaââ¬â¢s reigning puppets in the Middle East?
What is realistic about declaring a world crusade in the face of evidence that the US cannot successfully occupy Baghdad, a city of only 6 million people, much less Iraq, a country of only 25 million people?
There is nothing realistic about Bush or any of his advisers. The world has not seen such delusion since the Childrenââ¬â¢s Crusade led by a visionary French peasant, Stephen of Cloyes, marched off to free the Holy Land from the Muslims in the year 1212.
The children were captured and sold into slavery.
Bush and the Republican Party have morphed into a Jacobin Party. They sincerely believe that they have a monopoly on virtue and the obligation to impose US virtue on the rest of the world.
This Jacobin program requires the supremacy of executive power and is dependent on an unwarranted belief in the efficacy of force.
There is nothing American or democratic about this program. Bush speaks as Robespierre when he invokes "a fire in the minds of men" that "warms those who feel its power." Bush possesses Robespierreââ¬â¢s "pure conscience" as he destroys Iraqiââ¬â¢s infrastructure and the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, levels cities, and practices torture. American casualties (dead and wounded) have reached 10 percent of the US occupation force and are but the "realistic methods" Bush uses to achieve his "deeply idealistic" goals.
At home the casualties are the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Republicans explode in anger when a liberal judge creates a constitutional right. But they sit in silence when the US Department of Justice (sic) creates the right for Bush to decide who has constitutional protections and who has not.
Like Robespierre, Bush justifies the state of terror that he has brought to Iraq by his noble aspirations. The effect is to destroy idealism with hypocrisy about violence. When the neoconservatives succeed in draining idealism of its power, will they then declare violence alone to be their goal?
Led by Bush, the Republican Party now stands for detainment without trial and war without end.
It is a party destructive of all virtue and a great threat to life and liberty on earth.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Paul Craig Roberts is the author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelowââ¬â¢s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
[url]http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050124_war.htm[/url]
January 25, 2005 Does Bush Mean It?
By Paul Craig Roberts
Readers in numbers beyond my ability to reply individually have challenged me whether President Bushââ¬â¢s inaugural speech is a statement of his intentions or merely a celebration of himself and American democracy.
Surely Bush doesnââ¬â¢t believe America has the power to remake the world in its own image other than by being an example for others to follow?
The answer is that it doesnââ¬â¢t matter whether Bush believes, or even understands, what he said. The neoconservatives believe it, and they control the Bush administration.
On the heels of Bushââ¬â¢s speech, neocon Robert Kagan used his column in the Washington Post to set Bushââ¬â¢s inaugural speech in stone as US foreign policy.
Kagan wrote:
"The goal of American foreign policy is now to spread democracy, for its own sake, for reasons that transcend specific threats. In short, Bush has unmoored his foreign policy from the war on terrorism." [A Higher Realism, Jan 23]
This is precisely the goal of the neocons. It is why the neocons orchestrated "intelligence" and propaganda in order to bring about the invasion of Iraq, a country whose secular ruler suppressed terrorism.
The neoconsââ¬â¢ writings clearly state their goal and long predate the September 11 attacks on the US. Their agenda is independent of "the war on terror."
Many of those who signed the neocon strategy documents hold presidential appointments in the Bush administration and are the administrationââ¬â¢s most powerful members.
If Bush were in control or had a brain, he would have shut Cheney up and fired all the neocons who produced the Iraqi disaster.
Instead, despite the Iraqi mess, the Bush administration is publicly threatening to attack Iran, a country that has committed no terrorist or aggressive act toward the US. The Pentagon has been ordered to prepare plans. Apparently, the US has already inserted Special Forces into Iran to gather intelligence.
The neoconservatives are Jacobins. The neocons are the greatest threat America has ever faced, and they have the reins of power. Americans need to wake up to this fact and stop indulging their macho "kick their Muslim butts" fantasies and their "end times" Rapture fantasies.
The Bush administration is not establishing any democracies. It is starting a war that will last a generation.
That is the neocon plan. They have put their intentions in writing just as Hitler did. It is no protection that their plan is detached from reality. Robespierre was detached from reality, and that did not stop him. So were Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. People with power in their hands who are detached from reality are the most dangerous people of all.
The delusional quality of their rantings disarms people from taking them seriously: "Oh, they couldnââ¬â¢t mean that."
But they do.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Paul Craig Roberts is the author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelowââ¬â¢s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
[url]http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050125_bush.htm[/url]
2005-01-27 02:47 | User Profile
This is actually an excellent development for our side. Bush is finally being open and honest about the motives and goals which the New World Order has always operated in service of. This makes it much easier to critique.
I'm hoping Bush follows through, and heads for Iran and Syria, for starters. America is not invincible, and her wealth is not infinite. The more the Empire ties up its resources and wastes blood and treasure on these Utopian schemes, the faster it will collapse.