This is a powerful interview from a man who has served
his country well, who has now reached a point in his
life, where he has no fear of telling the truth. A truth
most Americans don't want to hear, and many will have
a hard time accepting...
"When the Constitution was destroyed, the US ceased to exist."
Global Research.com interviews Dr. Paul Craig Roberts,
former Assistant Secretary US Treasury, Associate Editor
Wall Street Journal, Professor of Political Economy Center
for Strategic and International Studies Georgetown University
Washington DC.
A Plague Upon The World: The USA is a "Failed State"
June 2, 2010
Question: Dr. Roberts, the United States is regarded
as the most successful state in the world today. What is
responsible for American success?
Dr. Roberts: Propaganda. If truth be known, the US is
a failed state. More about that later. The US owes its image
of success to: (1) the vast lands and mineral resources that
the US “liberated” with violence from the native inhabitants,
(2) Europe’s, especially Great Britain’s, self-destruction in
World War I and World War II, and (3) the economic destruction
of Russia and most of Asia by communism or socialism.
After World War II, the US took the reserve currency role from
Great Britain. This made the US dollar the world money and
permitted the US to pay its import bills in its own currency.
World War II’s destruction of the other industrialized
countries left the US as the only country capable of supplying
products to world markets. This historical happenstance
created among Americans the impression that they were a
favored people. Today the militarist neoconservatives speak of
the United States as “the indispensable nation.” In other
words, Americans are above all others, except, of course,
Israelis.
To American eyes a vague “terrorist threat,” a creation of
their own government, is sufficient justification for naked
aggression against Muslim peoples and for an agenda of world
hegemony.
This hubristic attitude explains why among most Americans
there is no remorse over the one million Iraqis killed and the
four million Iraqis displaced by a US invasion and occupation
that were based entirely on lies and deception. It explains
why there is no remorse among most Americans for the countless
numbers of Afghans who have been cavalierly murdered by the US
military, or for the Pakistani civilians murdered by US drones
and “soldiers” sitting in front of video screens. It explains
why there is no outrage among Americans when the Israelis bomb
Lebanese civilians and Gaza civilians. No one in the world
will believe that Israel’s latest act of barbarity, the
murderous attack on the international aid flotilla to Gaza,
was not cleared with Israel’s American enabler.
Question: You said that the US was a failed state.
How can that be? What do you mean?
Roberts: The war on terror, invented by the George W.
Bush/Dick Cheney regime, destroyed the US Constitution and the
civil liberties that the Constitution embodies. The Bill of
Rights has been eviscerated. The Obama regime has
institutionalized the Bush/Cheney assault on American liberty.
Today, no American has any rights if he or she is accused
of “terrorist” activity. The Obama regime has expanded the
vague definition of “terrorist activity” to include “domestic
extremist,” another undefined and vague category subject to
the government’s discretion. In short, a “terrorist” or
a “domestic extremist” is anyone who dissents from a policy or
a practice that the US government regards as necessary for its
agenda of world hegemony.
Unlike some countries, the US is not an ethnic group. It is
a collection of diverse peoples united under the Constitution.
When the Constitution was destroyed, the US ceased to exist.
What exists today are power centers that are unaccountable.
Elections mean nothing, as both parties are dependent on the
same powerful interest groups for campaign funds. The most
powerful interest groups are the military/security complex,
which includes the Pentagon, the CIA, and the corporations
that service them, the American-Israel Public Affairs
Committee, the oil industry that is destroying the Gulf of
Mexico, Wall Street (investment banks and hedge funds), the
insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, and the
agri-companies that produce food of questionable content.
These corporate powers comprise an oligarchy that cannot be
dislodged by voting. Ever since “globalism” was enacted into
law, the Democrats have been dependent on the same corporate
sources of income as the Republicans, because globalism
destroyed the labor unions. Consequently, there is no
difference between the Republicans and Democrats, or
no meaningful difference.
The “war on terror” completed the constitutional/legal failure
of the US. The US has also failed economically. Under Wall
Street pressure for short-term profits, US corporations have
moved offshore their production for US consumer markets. The
result has been to move US GDP and millions of well-paid
US jobs to countries, such as China and India, where labor
and professional expertise are cheap. This practice has been
going on since about 1990.
After 20 years of offshoring US production, which destroyed
American jobs and federal, state and local tax base, the US
unemployment rate, as measured by US government methodology
in 1980, is over 20 percent. The ladders of upward mobility
have been dismantled. Millions of young Americans with
university degrees are employed as waitresses and bartenders.
Foreign enrollment comprises a larger and larger percentage
of US universities as the American population finds that a
university degree has been negated by the offshoring of the
jobs that the graduates expected.
When US offshored production re-enters the US as imports,
the trade balance deteriorates. Foreigners use their surplus
dollars to purchase existing US assets.
Consequently, dividends, interest, capital gains, tolls from
toll roads, rents, and profits, now flow abroad to foreign
owners, thus increasing the pressure on the US dollar. The
US has been able to survive the mounting claims of foreigners
against US GDP because the US dollar is the reserve currency.
However, the large US budget and trade deficits will put
pressures on the dollar that will become too extreme for the
dollar to be able to sustain this role. When the dollar fails,
the US population will be impoverished.
The US is heavily indebted, both the government and the
citizens. Over the last decade there has been no growth in
family income. The US economy was kept going through the
expansion of consumer debt. Now consumers are so heavily
indebted that they cannot borrow more. This means that the
main driving force of the US economy, consumer demand, can
not increase. As consumer demand comprises 70% of the economy,
when consumer demand cannot increase, there can be no economic
recovery.
The US is a failed state also because there is no
accountability to the people by corporations or by government
at any level, whether state, local, or federal. British
Petroleum is destroying the Gulf of Mexico. The US government
has done nothing. The Obama regime’s response to the crisis is
more irresponsible than the Bush regime’s response to
Hurricane Katrina. Wetlands and fisheries are being destroyed
by unregulated capitalist greed and by a government that
treats the environment with contempt. The tourist economy of
Florida is being destroyed. The external costs of drilling in
deep waters exceeds the net worth of the oil industry. As a
result of the failure of the American state, the oil industry
is destroying one of the world’s most valuable ecological
systems.
Question: What can be done?
Roberts: The American people are lost in la-la land.
They have no idea that their civil liberties have been
forfeited. They are only gradually learning that their
economic future is compromised. They have little idea of the
world’s growing hatred of Americans for their destruction of
other peoples. In short, Americans are full of themselves.
They have no idea of the disasters that their ignorance and
inhumanity have brought upon themselves and upon the world.
Much of the world, looking at a country that appears both
stupid and inhumane, wonders at Americans’ fine opinion of
themselves. Is America the virtuous “indispensable nation”
of neoconservative propaganda, or is America a plague upon
the world?
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