[THS] Paul Craig Roberts: Who, Precisely, Is Attacking the World?

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26957.htm

Who, Precisely, Is Attacking the World?

By Paul Craig Roberts

December 01, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The stuck pigs are squealing.
To shift the onus from the U.S. State Department, Hillary Clinton paints WikiLeaks’
release of the “diplomatic cables” as an “attack on the international community.” To
reveal truth is equivalent, in the eyes of the U.S. government, to an attack on the
world.

It is WikiLeaks’ fault that all those U.S. diplomats wrote a quarter of a million
undiplomatic messages about America’s allies, a.k.a. puppet states. It is also
WikiLeaks’ fault that a member of the U.S. government could no longer stomach the
cynical ways in which the U.S. government manipulates foreign governments to
serve, not their own people, but American interests, and delivered the incriminating
evidence to WikiLeaks.

The U.S. government actually thinks that it was WikiLeaks’ patriotic duty to return the
evidence and to identify the leaker. After all, we mustn’t let the rest of the world find
out what we are up to. They might stop believing our lies.

The influential German magazine Der Spiegel writes: “It is nothing short of a political
meltdown for U.S. foreign policy.”

This might be more a hope than a reality. The “Soviet threat” during the second half
of the 20th century enabled U.S. governments to create institutions that subordinated
the interests of other countries to those of the U.S. government. After decades of
following U.S. leadership, European “leaders” know no other way to act. Finding out
that the boss badmouths and deceives them is unlikely to light a spirit of
independence. At least not until America’s economic collapse becomes more
noticeable.

The question is: how much will the press tell us about the documents? Spiegel itself
has said that the magazine is permitting the U.S. government to censor, at least in
part, what it prints about the leaked material. Most likely, this means the public will
not learn the content of the 4,330 documents that “are so explosive that they are
labeled ‘NOFORN,’” meaning that foreigners, including presidents, prime ministers,
and security services that share information with the CIA are not permitted to read
the documents. Possibly, also, the content of the 16,652 cables classified as “secret”
will not be revealed to the public.

Most likely the press, considering their readers’ interests, will focus on gossip and the
unflattering remarks Americans made about their foreign counterparts. It will be
good for laughs. Also, the U.S. government will attempt to focus the media in ways
that advance U.S. policies.

Indeed, it has already begun. On Nov. 29, National Public Radio emphasized that the
cables showed that Iran was isolated even in the Muslim world, making it easier for
the Israelis and Americans to attack. The leaked cables reveal that the president of
Egypt, an American puppet, hates Iran, and the Saudi Arabian government has been
long urging the U.S. government to attack Iran. In other words, Iran is so dangerous
to the world that even its co-religionists want Iran wiped off the face of the earth.

NPR presented several nonobjective “Iranian experts” who denigrated Iran and its
leadership and declared that the U.S. government, by resisting its Middle Eastern
allies’ call for bombing Iran, was the moderate in the picture. The fact that President
George W. Bush declared Iran to be a member of “the axis of evil” and threatened
repeatedly to attack Iran and that President Obama has continued the threats – Adm.
Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has just reiterated that the
U.S. hasn’t taken the attack option off the table – are not regarded by American
“Iran experts” as indications of anything other than American moderation.

Somehow it did not come across the NPR newscast that it is not Iran but Israel that
routinely slaughters civilians in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, and that it is not
Iran but the U.S. and its NATO mercenaries who slaughter civilians in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan.

Iran has not invaded any of its neighbors, but the Americans are invading countries
halfway around the globe.

The “Iranian experts” treated the Saudi and Egyptian rulers’ hatred of Iran as a
vindication of the U.S. and Israeli governments’ demonization of Iran. Not a single
“Iranian expert” was capable of pointing out that the tyrants who rule Egypt and
Saudi Arabia fear Iran because the Iranian government represents the interests of
Muslims, and the Saudi and Egyptian governments represent the interests of the
Americans.

Think what it must feel like to be a tyrant suppressing the aspirations of your own
people in order to serve the hegemony of a foreign country, while a nearby Muslim
government strives to protect its people’s independence from foreign hegemony.

Undoubtedly, the tyrants become very anxious. What if their oppressed subjects get
ideas? Little wonder the Saudi and Egyptian rulers want the Americans to eliminate
the independent-minded country that is a bad example for Egyptian and Saudi
subjects.

As long as the dollar has enough value that it can be used to purchase foreign
governments, information damaging to the U.S. government is unlikely to have much
affect. As Alain of Lille said a long time ago, “Money is all.”