[THS] Paul Craig Roberts: McChrystal`s Replacement or Obama1s

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25808.htm



Is Petraeus McChrystal’s Replacement or Obama’s

By Paul Craig Roberts

June 24, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Our petulant president’s ego can’t
handle a general letting off steam. Neither can any of the spoiled children who
comprise “our” government in DC, the capital of the “superpower.”

Generals have to fight wars that civilians start, either from the incompetence of their
diplomacy or the arrogance of their hubris. Generals have to get young troops killed
because of the stupidity or ambition or corruption of civilian government officials.

All McChrystal did was to let off steam. A real president would have realized that and
let it go.

Don’t get me wrong. McChrystal is a militarist, and I am pleased to see him gone.

However, McChrystal didn’t restart America’s aggression against Afghanistan. The
Obama moron did.

People elected Obama, because they were tired of Bush’s wars based on lies. So
Obama gave us a new war in Pakistan and reignited the Afghan war. No one knows
what these wars are about or why the bankrupt US government is wasting vast sums
of money, which it has to borrow from foreigners, in order to murder the citizenry in
two countries that have never done anything to us.

Just as Bush/Cheney and their criminal neocon government deceived the world that
Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction” that threatened white people
everywhere, Obama has conflated the Taliban with al Qaeda. Obama has sold the
tale to white countries that unless the US determines how Afghanistan is ruled and by
whom, white people are in danger of being exterminated by al Qaeda Taliban
terrorists.

The most telling aspect of the McChrystal-Obama contretemps is that it has caused
no one in the US government, or media, to ask why the US is still killing women and
children in Afghanistan after 9 years. The US government is prepared for everyone
except itself to be tried at the War Crimes Tribunal.

Fred Branfman writing in AlterNet on June 22 reminds us that five million Iraqis were
killed, maimed, tortured and displaced by an American invasion based on lies told by
the highest officials in the American government. Yet, no one has been held
accountable.

But Gen. McChrystal is held accountable for letting off steam.

Once the Roman senate, the legislative branch, collapsed, the caesars, the executive
branch, became the captives of the military. Now with Gen. Petraeus once again
moved to the fore as McChrystal’s replacement in Afghanistan, we have the Obama
moron elevating Petraeus to the Republican presidential nomination in the next
election. Thus
has Obama replaced himself with a man who will unify the military and executive
branch.

Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven and Anne Gearan write (June 23) about the
“admired and tightly disciplined Gen. David Petraeus,” the “architect of the Iraq war
turnaround,” who is “once again to take hands-on leadership of a troubled war
effort.”

Petraeus is an evolved form of general. He “won” in Iraq by paying protection money
to the Sunnis who were effectively resisting the US occupation. Petraeus figured out
that it was far cheaper and more efficient to put the Sunnis on the US military payroll
and to pay them to stop fighting, which is how the war between the Sunnis and the
Americans ended. To keep the Americans out of the ongoing large scale sectarian
violence that continues to slaughter Iraqis, the US military was confined to remote
bases.

If history is a guide, the Afghans will also accept Petraeus’ protection money, and
Petraeus has just enough time to buy the Afghan war before the next presidential
election.

The Afghans will, of course, take the money and wait us out, just as the Iraqis are
doing.

All of this drama is playing out despite the continuing lack of any valid reason for the
American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Washington idiots, trying to dictate
how Iraq and Afghanistan are governed, are destroying constitutional government in
the United States. In our hubris to determine how Iraq and Afghanistan are ruled,
we are losing our own government.