Is War With Russia on the Agenda? Calamity in the Name of Hegemony

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08262008.html


Race and propaganda are more likely to determine the outcome of the November election than any awareness or consideration of real issues by voters.

The real issues are suffocated by the media. The American middle class is being destroyed by jobs offshoring and work visas for foreigners, while the incomes of the super rich are soaring. The US dollar’s reserve currency status is eroded. The US is massively in debt at home and abroad. Health insurance is unaffordable for the vast majority of the population. Injured veterans are being nickeled and dimed, while Halliburton’s profits escalate. Americans are losing their homes, while the US government bails out banks. Wars with Iran, Russia, and China are being planned in order to secure US hegemony.

Americans no longer have a government that is for the people and by the people. They have a government for and by special interests and an insane ideology.

But Americans have war, which lets them take out all their frustrations, resentments, and disappointments on “Muslim terrorists” and “Russian aggressors.” Few Americans are disturbed that 1.25 million Iraqis and an unknown number of Afghans have died as a result of American invasions based on Bush regime lies and deceptions. Even Americans, like Senator Biden, Obama’s selection for vice president, who understand that the wars are based on lies, still want the US to win. So, it was all a mistake and a deception, but let’s win anyway and keep on killing.

I know people who still complain that the US did not nuke North Vietnam. When I ask why Vietnam should have been nuked, they reply, “if we had nuked them we would have won.”

What would America have won? The answer is world loathing and the loss of the cold war.

For many Americans, war is like a sports contest in which they take vicarious pleasure and cheer on their side to victory. Millions of Americans are still bitter that “the liberal media” and war protesters caused America to lose the Vietnam war, and they are determined that this won’t happen again. These Americans have no realization that there was no more reason for the US to be fighting in Vietnam 40 years ago than to be fighting today in Iraq and Afghanistan or tomorrow in Iran.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. The neocons cavalierly treat war like a football game or a hostile corporate take-over.

All in the abstract without risk of loss of capital and/or life.