By Paul Craig Roberts, published on CounterPunch.org 1/22/07
Everyone knows that Bush’s Iraq “surge”
will not work. Even the authors of the plan, neoconservatives
Frederick Kagan and Jack Keane, have emphasized that the plan
cannot work with any less than an addition of 50,000 US troops
committed to another three years of combat. Bush is only adding
40% of that number of troops, and Defense Secretary Gates speaks
of the operation being over by summer’s end.
On January 18 a panel of retired
generals testifying on Capitol Hill slammed Bush’s surge plan
as “a fool’s errand.” Even the easily bamboozled American
public knows the plan will not work. Newsweek’s latest poll released
January 20 shows that only 23% of the public support sending
more troops to Iraq and that twice as many Americans trust the
Democrats in Congress than trust Bush.
A majority of Americans (54%)
believe Bush to be neither honest nor ethical, and 57% believe
that Bush lacks “strong leadership qualities.”
Nevertheless, Bush defended
his surge plan, telling a group of TV stations last week, “I
believe it will work.”
Bush is correct that it will
work–indeed, the surge is working. We have to be clear about
how the plan works. It does not mean that 21,500 more US troops
will bring order and stability to Iraq. The surge is working,
because it is deflecting attention from the Bush Regime’s real
game plan.
The real game plan is to orchestrate
a war with Iran and to initiate wider conflict in the Middle
East before public and military pressure forces the Bush Regime
to withdraw US troops from Iraq.
Two US carrier attack groups
have been deployed to the Persian Gulf. US missile systems are
being sent to oil producing countries to counter any incoming
missiles from Iran should any survive the US attack. Israeli
pilots have been training for an attack on Iran. US war doctrine
has been changed to permit pre-emptive nuclear attack on non-nuclear
countries. US attack aircraft have been deployed at bases in
Turkey. A neocon admiral who attends AIPAC events has been made
commander in chief of US forces in the Middle East. Obviously,
the ground war in Iraq and Afghanistan are not the focus of the
Bush Regime’s new military deployments. The Bush Regime is focused
on attacking Iran.
In CounterPunch (January 16)
Col. Sam Gardiner reports that the Bush Regime has put into operation
a group led by National Security Council staff whose mission
is to create and foment outrage against Iran. Col. Gardiner
details various signs of the Bush Regime’s escalation and indicates
some of the final deployments that will signal an imminent strike
on Iran, such as “USAF tankers moved to unusual places,
like Bulgaria” in order to position them for refueling B-2
bombers on their way to Iran.
Both Michel Chossudovsky (ICH
Jan. 17) and Jorge Hirsch (CounterPunch Jan. 20) have recently
documented evidence that the Bush Regime is orchestrating a crisis
with Iran that can lead to the use of nuclear weapons to attack
Iran.
Civil libertarians who have
observed the Bush Regime’s concentration of dictatorial powers
in the presidency expect that war with Iran, especially if fearful
nuclear weapons are used, will be accompanied by Bush’s declaration
of a state of emergency. The Bush Regime will use the state
of emergency to grab more arbitrary and dictatorial powers in
the name of protecting “national security interests”
and American citizens from “terrorism.”
As the Regime’s crimes against
the US Constitution and humanity will be monstrous, dissent will
be throttled in ways that will make Americans afraid to speak,
or even to think, the truth. By stifling dissent, the Bush Regime
will escape accountability for launching wars on the basis of
blatant lies. It will complete its destruction of the civil liberties
that protect free speech, dissent, and Americans from arbitrary
arrest and indefinite detention without charges or access to
attorneys.
Congress is wasting precious
time with non-binding resolutions and debates over cutting off
war funding. The Bush Regime is rushing the country into a war
and a domestic police state. Writing in Slate, Dahlia Lithwick
reports that one of the main goals of the so-called “war
on terror” (essentially a propagandistic hoax) is to achieve
a massive expansion in unaccountable executive power. This is
a long-time goal of VP Cheney and his chief of staff, David Addington.
It is also the main goal of the “conservative” Federalist
Society, an organization of Republican lawyers from whose membership
Republican judicial nominees are drawn.
American public opinion is
being manipulated. In the name of protecting “American
freedom and democracy,” the Bush regime rides roughshod
over both as it ignores both the public and Congress and proceeds
with a catastrophic policy supported by no one but the Bush Regime
and a cabal of power-mad neoconservatives.
Nothing can stop the Regime
except the immediate impeachment of Bush and Cheney. This is
America’s last chance.
—
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.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com