September 08, 2003

A Wider War – Unless The Democrats Speak Out

I blame the Democrats for the “war on terror.” I know the neoconservatives planned the conquest of the Middle East long before the events of September 11 gave them an excuse. Internet pundits are familiar with the blueprint for American Empire put together by the neocon think tank, Project for the New American Century. Indeed, everyone in the world seems to know about it except the American public.

Still, the Democrats are to blame. It was the Democrats’ war on Bush that created the “war on terror.”

Bush campaigned as a humble American who wasn’t going to boss the world around and send troops everywhere. The closeness of Bush’s election, the Democrats’ attempt to steal Florida with recounts, and the one vote margin of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bush’s favor, made Bush vulnerable to Democrats’ charges that he was an illegitimate President.

September 11 rescued the Bush presidency. Karl Rove instantly repositioned Bush as War Leader, and the Democrats were forced off their attack.

The seeming success of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan brought together Karl Rove’s war leader strategy with the neocons’ agenda for American-Israeli hegemony over the Muslim Middle East.

Overnight, neocon propagandists turned secular Iraq into a terrorist bogeyman.

Never mind that Saddam Hussein had long suppressed Islamic extremists with an iron fist. Neocon propaganda morphed him into a more dangerous terrorist than Osama bin Laden, one armed with weapons of mass destruction, including nukes, which could be unleashed on American cities at any time.

No one fell for this fantasy except the American public—the one public that counted. Consequently, despite all denials and promises, the U.S. finds itself bogged down in Iraq, where we are hemorrhaging money while the lives of our soldiers trickle away.

Bush’s Sunday night speech [audio video] acknowledged none of the realities that have emerged since the ill-fated invasion of Iraq. Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were a propaganda hoax. No terrorist connection to Iraq existed until the U.S. invasion and occupation created one.

How do we rebuild a country that is intent upon driving us out?

How do we exit without Iraq dissolving into bloody civil war?

The U.S. invasion of Iraq has created many new problems and solved none. A real leader would stand up and state this obvious fact. A real leader would fire the neocon propagandists in high government offices who misled both him and the public.

A real leader would do this, that is, if the opposition party would allow him. This the Democrats will not do. The minute Bush admits the invasion was a mistake, the Democrats will destroy him.

Thus are the Democrats the staunch allies of the warmongering neocons. The Democrats poised to pounce keep the neocon strategy in place to admit no mistake and to continue with the conquest of the Middle East.

The morning after Bush’s Sunday night speech, neocon Michael Ledeen warned Bush not to lose focus: “We can’t possibly win in Iraq unless we bring down the mullahcracy in Tehran” and confront “the ongoing Saudi and Syrian support for terror.”

That makes three more Muslim countries to invade, even though the U.S. lacks a large enough army to occupy Iraq.

Neocons will not be content until we have six hundred million Muslims stirred up and at our throats.

Even this isn’t enough for some neocons, who want us to take on North Korea as well and bring about “regime change” in China!

This neocon agenda is beyond our strength even if we bring back the draft.

It is a terrible thing to watch “politics as usual” enable Likudniks to destroy our country with a quixotic crusade.

If only Democrats had the leadership to tell Bush that if he calls off World War IV, they will sing his praise.

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 Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.