by
Paul Craig Roberts
PaulCraigRoberts.org

Recently
by Paul Craig Roberts: Unplugging
Americans From the Matrix

Washington
has pressured the Philippines, whose government it owns, into conducting
joint military exercises in the South China Sea. WashingtonÂ’s
excuse is that China has territorial disputes with the Philippines,
Indonesia, and other countries concerning island and sea rights
in the South China Sea. Washington asserts that ChinaÂ’s territorial
disputes with the like of Indonesia and the Philippines are a matter
of United StatesÂ’ national interests.

Washington
has not made it clear what WashingtonÂ’s stake is in the disputes.
The reason Washington cannot identify why ChinaÂ’s disputes
with the Philippines and Indonesia are threats to the United States
is that there is no reason. Nevertheless, the undefined “threat”
has become the reason Washington needs more naval bases in the Philippines
and South Korea.

What this is
all about is provoking a long-term cold war conflict with China
that will keep
profits and power flowing into WashingtonÂ’s military-security
complex. Large profits flow to armaments companies. A portion of
the profits reflow into campaign contributions to “the people’s
representatives” in DC and to presidential candidates who openly
sell out their country to private interests.

Washington
is going to construct new naval bases in the Philippines and on
the environmentally protected Jeju Island belonging to South Korea.
Washington will waste tax revenues, or print more money, in order
to build the unnecessary fleets to occupy these bases. Washington
is acquiring bases in Australia for US Marines to protect Australia
from China, despite the lack of Chinese threats against Australia.
Bush and Obama are the leading models of the “people’s
president” who sell out the people, at home and abroad, to
private interests.

Why is Washington
ramping up a new cold war?

The answer
begins with President EisenhowerÂ’s warning to the American
people in his last public address about the military/industrial
complex in 1961. I wonÂ’t quote the warning as it is available
online. Eisenhower pointed out to Americans that unlike previous
wars after which the US demilitarized, after World War II the cold
war with the Soviet Union kept the power and profits flowing into
the military/industrial complex, now known as the military/security
complex. President Eisenhower said that the flow of power and profit
into the military/industrial complex was a threat to the economic
wellbeing and liberty of the American people.

No one paid
any attention, and the military/security complex was glad to be
rid of the five-star general war hero president when his second
term expired. Thanks to the hype about the “Soviet threat,”
the military/security complex faced an unlimited horizon of mounting
profits and power as Americans sacrificed their future to the interests
of those who protected Americans from the Soviet threat.

The good times
rolled for the armaments companies and security agencies for almost
three decades until Reagan and Gorbachev reached agreement and ended
the cold war. When the Soviet Union subsequently collapsed, the
future outlook for the power and profit of the US military/security
complex was bleak. The one percent was about to lose its fortunes
and the secret government was about to lose its power.

The military/security
complex went to work to revive the need for a massive “defense”
and “security” budget. Among their willing tools were
the neoconservatives, with their French Jacobin ideology and Israeli
loyalties. The neocons defined America as the “indispensable
people.” Such extraordinary people as Americans must establish
hegemony over the world as the sole remaining superpower. As most
neoconservatives are allied with Israel, the Muslim Middle East
became the target of opportunity.

Muslims are
sufficiently different from Westerners that Muslims are easy to
demonize.
The demonization began in the neoconservative publications. Once
Dick Cheney had the George W. Bush regime staffed with neoconservatives,
the next step was to create “threats” to Americans out
of verbiage about the TalibanÂ’s responsibility for 9/11 and
about “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,” including verbal
images from Bush’s National Security Advisor of “mushroom
clouds” over US cities.

No one in the
US government or the “free” US media or the media of the
US puppet states in England, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Canada, Australia
and South Korea was struck by WashingtonÂ’s proposition that
“the world’s sole superpower” was threatened by the
likes of Iraq and Iran, neither of which had any offensive military
capability or any modern weapons, according to the unequivocal reports
of the weapons inspectors.

What kind of
“superpower” is threatened by Iraq and Iran? Certainly,
not a real one.

No one seemed
to notice that the alleged 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabians, not
Afghans or Iraqis, yet it was Afghanistan and Iraq that were labeled
“terrorist threats.” Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, which do
terrorize their subjects, are safe from having America bring them
democracy, because they are WashingtonÂ’s puppets, not independent
countries.

As fear of
nonentities swept over the population of “the world’s
sole superpower,” the demands for war against “America’s
enemies” – ”you are with us or against us” – swept
through the country. “Support the troops” plastic ribbons
appeared on American cars. Americans went into a frenzy. The “towel
heads” were after us, and we had to fight for our lives or
be murdered in our beds, shopping centers, and airliner seats.

It was all
a hoax to replace the Soviet threat with the Muslim threat.

The problem
that developed with the “Muslim threat” is that in order
to keep the profits and power flowing into the military/security
complex, the promised six-week war in Iraq had to be extended into
8 years. The war in Afghanistan against a few thousand lightly armed
Taliban has persisted for more than a decade, longer than the attempted
Red Army occupation of Afghanistan.

In other words,
the problem with hot wars is that the need not to win them in order
to keep them going (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan are all long-term
wars never won) in order that the profits and power continue to
flow to the military/security complex demoralizes the US military
and creates the world-wide impression that the “world’s
sole superpower” cannot even defeat a few thousand insurgents
armed with AK-47s, much less a real army.

In Iraq and
Afghanistan more US soldiers have died from demoralization and suicides
than from combat. In Iraq, the US was humiliated by having to end
the war by putting the Sunni insurgents on the US military payroll
and paying them to stop killing US troops. In Korea the US was stopped
by an army of a backward third world country that lived on rice.
What would happen today if the US “superpower’s”
militarily confronted China, a country with an economy on which
the US is dependent, about equal in size to the US economy, operating
on its home territory? The only chance the evil in Washington would
have would be nuclear war, which would mean the destruction of the
entire world by WashingtonÂ’s hubris.

Fortunately,
profits are more important to Washington than ending life on earth.
Therefore, war with China will be avoided, just as it was avoided
with the Soviet Union. However, China will be presented by Washington
and its prostitute media, especially the New York Times, Washington
Post, and MurdochÂ’s collection of whores, as the rising threat
to America. The media story will shift the importance of AmericaÂ’s
allies from Europe to countries bordering the South China Sea. American
taxpayersÂ’ money, or newly printed money, will flow into the
“new alliance against China.”

ChinaÂ’s
rise is a great boon to the US military/security complex, which
governs america in which there is a pretense of “freedom and
democracy.” China is the profitable replacement for the “Soviet
threat.” As the days go by, the presstitute media will create
in the feeble minds of Americans “The CHINA Threat.”

Soon
whatever little remains of the US living standard will be sacrificed
to WashingtonÂ’s confrontation with China, along with the seizure
of our pensions and personal savings in order to deter “the
China threat.”

If only Americans
were an intelligent people. Then they might have some prospect of
holding on to their incomes, remaining wealth, and liberty. Unfortunately,
Americans are so thoroughly plugged into the Matrix that they present
as a doomed people, incapable of thought, reason, or ability to
comprehend the facts that the rest of the world sees clearly.

Can reality
be brought to the American people? Perhaps a miracle will occur.
Stay tuned.

May
1, 2012

Paul
Craig Roberts [send
him mail], a
former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate
editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases
of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book,

The
Tyranny of Good Intentions,
co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how
americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random
House. Visit his website.

Copyright
© 2012 Paul
Craig Roberts

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