Paul Craig Roberts
“No legal issue arises when the
United States responds to a challenge to its power, position, and prestige.”
–Dean Acheson, 1962, speaking to the American Society of International Law
Dean Acheson declared 51 years ago
that power, position, and prestige are the ingredients of national security and
that national security trumps law. In the United States democracy takes a back
seat to “national security,” a prerogative of the executive branch of
government.
National security is where the
executive branch hides its crimes against law, both domestic and international,
its crimes against the Constitution, its crimes against innocent citizens both
at home and abroad, and its secret agendas that it knows that the American
public would never support.
“National security” is the cloak
that the executive branch uses to make certain that the US government is
unaccountable.
Without accountable government there
is no civil liberty and no democracy except for the sham voting that existed in
the Soviet Union and now exists in the US.
There have been periods in US
history, such as President Lincoln’s war to prevent secession, World War I, and
World War II, when accountable government was impaired.
These were short episodes of the
Constitution’s violation, and the Constitution was reinstated in the aftermath
of the wars. However, since the Clinton regime, the accountability of
government has been declining for more than two decades, longer than the three
wars combined.
In law there is the concept of
adverse possession, popularly known as “squatters’ rights.” A non-owner who
succeeds in occupying a piece of property or some one else’s right for a
certain time without being evicted enjoys the ownership title conveyed to him.
The reasoning is that by not defending his rights, the owner showed his
disinterest and in effect gave his rights away.
Americans have not defended their
rights conveyed by the US Constitution for the duration of the terms of three
presidents. The Clinton regime was not held accountable for its illegal attack
on Serbia. The Bush regime was not held accountable for its illegal invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq. The Obama regime was not held accountable for its renewed
attack on Afghanistan and its illegal attacks on Libya, Pakistan, and Yemen,
and by its proxies on Syria.
We also have other strictly illegal
and unconstitutional acts of government for which the government has not been
held accountable. The Bush regimes’ acts of torture, indefinite detention, and
warrantless spying, and the Obama regime’s acts of indefinite detention,
warrantless spying, and murder of US citizens without due process. As the Obama
regime lies through its teeth, we have no way of knowing whether torture is
still practiced.
If these numerous criminal acts of
the US government spread over the terms of three presidents pass into history
as unchallenged events, the US government will have acquired squatters’ rights
in lawlessness. The US Constitution will be, as President George W. Bush is
reported to have declared, “a scrap of paper.”
Lawlessness is the hallmark of
tyranny enforced by the police state. In a police state law is not a protector
of rights but a weapon in the hands of government. [see Roberts &
Stratton, The Tyranny of Good Intentions] The accused has no recourse to the
accusation, which does not require evidence presented to a court. The accused
is guilty by accusation alone and can be shot in the back of the head, as under
Stalin, or blown up by a drone missile, as under Obama.
As a person aware of the long
struggle against the tyrannical state, I have been amazed and disheartened by
the acceptance not only by the insouciant American public, but also by law
schools, bar associations, media, Congress and the Supreme Court of the
executive branch’s claim to be above both law and the US Constitution.
As Lawrence Stratton and I show in
our book about how the law was lost, liberals and conservatives chasing after
their favorite devils, such as child abusers and drug pushers, and prosecutors,
judges, and police devoted to conviction and not to justice, have gradually
eroded over time the concept of law as a protection of the innocent, With the
atmosphere of threat created by 9/11, the final destruction of the protective
features of law was quickly achieved in the name of making us safe from
terrorists.
The fact that we are no longer safe
from our own government did not register.
This is how liberty was lost, and
America with it.
Can liberty be regained? Probably
not, but there is a chance if Americans have the necessary strength of
character. The chance comes from the now known fact that the neoconservative
Bush/Cheney regime took America and its puppet states to war in Afghanistan and
Iraq entirely on the basis of lies. As all evidence proves, these wars were not
the results of mistaken intelligence. They were the products of intentional
lies.
The weapons inspectors told the Bush
regime that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Despite this
known fact, the Bush regime sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN with
fabricated evidence to convince the world that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of
mass destruction” and was a threat to the world. Even if such weapons had
existed in Iraq, many countries have them, including the US and Israel, and the
presence of weapons does not under the Nuremberg Laws justify unprovoked
aggression against the possessor. Under the Nuremberg Laws, unprovoked military
aggression is a war crime, not the possession of weapons that many countries
have. The war crime was committed by the US and its “coalition of the willing,”
not by Saddam Hussein.
As for the invasion of Afghanistan,
we know from the last video of Osama bin Laden in October 2001, attested by
experts to be the last appearance of a man dying of renal failure and other
diseases, that he declared that he had no responsibility for 9/11 and that
Americans should look to their own government. We know as a reported fact that
the Afghan Taliban offered to turn over Osama bin Laden to Washington if the
Bush regime would provide the evidence that indicated bin Laden was
responsible. The Bush regime refused to hand over the (non-existent) evidence
and, with support of the corrupt and cowardly Congress and the presstitute
media, attacked Afghanistan without any legal justification. Remember, the FBI
has stated publicly that it has no evidence that Osama bin Laden was
responsible for 9/11 and that that is why the crimes for which the FBI wanted
bin Laden did not include responsibility for the 9/11 attack.
The war propaganda campaign was well
prepared. Yellow ribbon decals were handed out for cars proclaiming “support
the troops.” In other words, anyone who raises the obvious questions is not
supporting the troops. Still today insouciant Americans sport these decals on
their cars unaware that what they are supporting are the murder of foreign
women, children and village elders, the death and physical and mental maiming
of American soldiers, and the worldwide destruction of the reputation of the
United States, with America’s main rival, China, now calling for a
“de-Americanized world.”
A country with a population as
insouciant as Americans is a country in which the government can do as it
pleases.
Now that we have complete proof that
the criminal Bush regime took our country to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
solely on the basis of intentional lies, how can the legal institutions, the
courts, the American people possibly tolerate the Obama regime’s ignoring of
the obvious crimes? How can America simply accept Obama’s statement that we
mustn’t look back, only move ahead? If the US government, which has committed
the worst crimes of our generation, cannot be held accountable and punished,
how can federal, state, and local courts fill up American prisons with people
who smoked pot and with people who did not sufficiently grovel before the police
state.
Doubtless, the Obama regime, should
it obey the law and prosecute the Bush regime’s crimes, would have to worry
about being prosecuted for its own crimes, which are just as terrible.
Nevertheless, I believe that the Obama regime could survive if it put all the
blame on the Bush regime, prosecuted the Bush criminals, and desisted from the
illegal actions that it currently supports. This would save the Constitution
and US civil liberty, but it would require the White House to take the risk
that by enforcing US law, US law might be enforced against its own illegal and
unconstitutional acts by a succeeding regime.
The Bush/Cheney/John Yoo
neoconservative regime having got rid of US law, no doubt the Obama regime
thinks it is best to leave the situation as it is, rid of law.
Without accountability, America is
finished. Not only will Americans live in a police state with no civil
liberties, but the rest of the world is already looking at America with a
jaundiced eye. The US is being reconstituted as an authoritarian state. All it
takes is one failure of accountability for the police state to become
entrenched, and we have had numerous failures of accountability. Does anyone
really believe that some future government is going to make restitution to persecuted
truth-tellers, such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowdon, as
was done for Japanese Americans?
Now that we know for a certain fact
that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were based on propaganda and lies,
Congress and the world media should demand to know what was the real secret
agenda. What are the real reasons for which Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded?
No truthful explanation for these
wars exists.
Paul O’Neill, the Bush regime’s
first Treasury Secretary, is on public record stating that at the very first
cabinet meeting, long prior to 9/11, the agenda was a US attack on Iraq.
In other words, the Bush regime’s
attack on Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.
What was the Bush regime’s secret
agenda, kept secret by the Obama regime, that required an illegal, war
criminal, attack on a sovereign country, an action for which officials of
Hitler’s government were executed? What is the real purpose of Washington’s
wars?
It is totally and completely obvious
that the wars have nothing to do with protecting Americans from terrorism. If
anything, the wars stir up and create terrorists. The wars create hatred of
America that never previously existed. Despite this, America is free of
terrorists attacks except for the ones orchestrated by the FBI. What the
fabricated “terror threat” has done is to create a thorough-going domestic
police state that is unaccountable.
Americans need to understand that
they have lost their country. The rest of the world needs to recognize that
Washington is not merely the most complete police state since Stalinism, but
also a threat to the entire world. The hubris and arrogance of Washington,
combined with Washington’s huge supply of weapons of mass destruction, make
Washington the greatest threat that has ever existed to all life on the planet.
Washington is the enemy of all humanity.
Then there was Operation Northwoods where the documents have come out showing that the CIA wanted to kill Americans and blame it on Cuba to start a war. Every single war has been started with fake news all so some in the Military get to play with their toys no matter how many boys die for their games.
