But police-state employees are invaluable
By Paul Craig Roberts
In my last column I emphasized that it was important for American citizens
to demand to know what the real agendas are behind the wars of choice by the
Bush and Obama regimes. These are major long term wars each lasting two to
three times as long as World War II.
Forbes reports that one million US soldiers have been injured in the Iraq
and Afghanistan wars. http://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccaruiz/2013/11/04/report-a-million-veterans-injured-in-iraq-afghanistan-wars/
RT reports that the cost of keeping each US soldier in Afghanistan has
risen from $1.3 million per soldier to $2.1 million per soldier. http://rt.com/usa/us-afghanistan-pentagon-troops-budget-721/
Matthew J. Nasuti reports in the Kabul Press that it cost US taxpayers $50
million to kill one Taliban soldier. That means it cost $1 billion to kill 20
Taliban fighters. http://kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article32304 This is a war that can
be won only at the cost of the total bankruptcy of the United States.
Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have estimated that the current
out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars is
at least $6 trillion.
In other words, it is the cost of these two wars that explain the explosion
of the US public debt and the economic and political problems associated with
this large debt.
What has America gained in return for $6 trillion and one million injured
soldiers, many very severely?
In Iraq there is now an Islamist Shia regime allied with Iran in place of a
secular Sunni regime that was an enemy of Iran, one as dictatorial as the
other, presiding over war ruins, ongoing violence as high as during the
attempted US occupation, and extraordinary birth defects from the toxic
substances associated with the US invasion and occupation.
In Afghanistan there is an undefeated and apparently undefeatable Taliban
and a revived drug trade that is flooding the Western world with drugs.
The icing on these Bush and Obama “successes” are demands from around the
world that Americans and former British PM Tony Blair be held accountable for
their war crimes. Certainly, Washington’s reputation has plummeted as a result
of these two wars. No governments anywhere are any longer sufficiently gullible
as to believe anything that Washington says.
These are huge costs for wars for which we have no explanation.
The Bush/Obama regimes have come up with various cover stories: a “war on
terror,”“we have to kill them over there before they come over here,” “weapons
of mass destruction,” revenge for 9/11, Osama bin Laden (who died of his
illnesses in December 2001 as was widely reported at the time).
None of these explanations are viable. Neither the Taliban nor Saddam
Hussein were engaged in terrorism in the US. As the weapons inspectors informed
the Bush regime, there were no WMD in Iraq. Invading Muslim countries and
slaughtering civilians is more likely to create terrorists than to suppress
them. According to the official story, the 9/11 hijackers and Osama bin Laden
were Saudi Arabians, not Afghans or Iraqis. Yet it wasn’t Saudi Arabia that was
invaded.
Democracy and accountable government simply does not exist when the
executive branch can take a country to wars in behalf of secret agendas
operating behind cover stories that are transparent lies.
It is just as important to ask these same questions about the agenda of the
US police state. Why have Bush and Obama removed the protection of law as a
shield of the people and turned law into a weapon in the hands of the executive
branch? How are Americans made safer by the overthrow of their civil liberties?
Indefinite detention and execution without due process of law are the hallmarks
of the tyrannical state. They are terrorism, not a protection against
terrorism. Why is every communication of every American and apparently the
communications of most other people in the world, including Washington’s most
trusted European allies, subject to being intercepted and stored in a gigantic
police state database? How does this protect Americans from terrorists?
Why is it necessary for Washington to attack the freedom of the press and
speech, to run roughshod over the legislation that protects whistleblowers such
as Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, to criminalize dissent and protests, and
to threaten journalists such as Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, and Fox News
reporter James Rosen? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/opinion/another-chilling-leak-investigation.html?_r=0
How does keeping citizens ignorant of their government’s crimes make
citizens safe from terrorists?
These persecutions of truth-tellers have nothing whatsoever to do with
“national security” and “keeping Americans safe from terrorists.” The only
purpose of these persecutions is to protect the executive branch from having
its crimes revealed. Some of Washington’s crimes are so horrendous that the
International Criminal Court would issue a death sentence if those guilty could
be brought to trial. A government that will destroy the constitutional
protections of free speech and a free press in order to prevent its criminal
actions from being disclosed is a tyrannical government.
One hesitates to ask these questions and to make even the most obvious
remarks out of fear not only of being put on a watch list and framed on some
charge or the other, but also out of fear that such questions might provoke a
false flag attack that could be used to justify the police state that has been
put in place.
Perhaps that was what the Boston Marathon Bombing was. Evidence of the two
brothers’ guilt has taken backseat to the government’s claims. There is nothing
new about government frame-ups of patsies. What is new and unprecedented is the
lockdown of Boston and its suburbs, the appearance of 10,000 heavily armed
troops and tanks to patrol the streets and search without warrants the homes of
citizens, all in the name of protecting the public from one wounded 19 year old
kid.
Not only has nothing like this ever before happened in the US, but also it
could not have been organized on the spur of the moment. It had to have been
already in place waiting for the event. This was a trial run for what is to
come.
Unaware Americans, especially gullible “law and order conservatives,” have
no idea about the militarization of even their local police. I have watched
local police forces train at gun clubs. The police are taught to shoot first
not once but many times, to protect their lives first at all costs, and not to
risk their lives by asking questions. This is why the 13-year old kid with the
toy rifle was shot to pieces. Questioning would have revealed that it was a toy
gun, but questioning the “suspect” might have endangered the precious police
who are trained to take no risks whatsoever.
The police operate according to Obama’s presidential kill power: murder
first then create a case against the victim.
In other words, dear American citizen, you life is worth nothing, but the police
whom you pay, are not only unaccountable but also their lives are invaluable.
If you get killed in their line of duty, it is no big deal. But don’t you
injure a police goon thug in an act of self-defense. I mean, who do you think
you are, some kind of mythical free American with rights?
Further reading:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/clemency-for-torturers-but-not-for-edward-snowden/281142/http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/innocent-man-given-anal-cavity-search-colonoscopy-after-rolling-through-a-stop-sign/http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/police-tased-arrested-father-as-he-tried-to-save-his-3-year-old-son-from-house-fire/
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