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by Paul Craig Roberts
The Bush-Cheney regime is America's first neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has
destroyed the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the remains of
America's moral reputation along with the infrastructures of two Muslim countries and countless thousands
of Islamic civilians. Plans have been prepared, and forces moved into place, for an attack on a third Islamic
country, Iran, and perhaps Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well.
This extraordinary aggressiveness toward the US Constitution, international law, and the Islamic world is the
work, not of a vast movement, but of a handful of ideologues – principally Vice President Dick Cheney,
Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay
Khalilzad, John Bolton, Philip Zelikow, and Attorney General Gonzales. These are the main operatives who
have controlled policy. They have been supported by their media shills at the Weekly Standard, National
Review, Fox News, New York Times, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page and by "scholars"
in assorted think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute.
The entirety of their success in miring the United States in what could become permanent conflict in the
Middle East is based on the power of propaganda and the big lie.
Initially, the 9/11 attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden, but after an American puppet was installed in
Afghanistan, the blame for 9/11 was shifted to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who was said to have weapons of
mass destruction that would be used against America. The regime sent Secretary of State Colin Powell
to tell the lie to the UN that the Bush-Cheney regime had conclusive proof of Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction.
Having conned the UN, Congress, and the American people, the regime invaded Iraq under totally false
pretenses and with totally false expectations. The regime's occupation of Iraq has failed in a military sense,
but the neoconservatives are turning their failure into a strategic advantage. At the beginning of this year
President Bush began blaming Iran for America's embarrassing defeat by a few thousand lightly armed
insurgents in Iraq.
Bush accuses Iran of arming the Iraqi insurgents, a charge that experts regard as improbable. The Iraqi
insurgents are Sunni. They inflict casualties on our troops, but spend most of their energy killing Iraqi
Shi'ites, who are closely allied with Iran, which is Shi'ite. Bush's accusation requires us to believe that Iran
is arming the enemies of its allies.
On the basis of this absurd accusation – a pure invention – Bush has ordered a heavy concentration of
aircraft carrier attack forces off Iran's coast, and he has moved US attack planes to Turkish bases and
other US bases in countries contingent to Iran.
In testimony before Congress on February 1 of this year, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinski said that he expected the regime to orchestrate a "head-on conflict with Iran and with much of
the world of Islam at large." He said a plausible scenario was "a terrorist act blamed on Iran, culminating
in a 'defensive' US military action against Iran." He said that the neoconservative propaganda machine
was already articulating a "mythical historical narrative" for widening their war against Islam.
Why is the US spending one trillion dollars on wars, the reasons for which are patently false. What is
going on?
There are several parts to the answer. Like their forebears among the Jacobins of the French Revolution,
the Bolsheviks of the communist revolution, and the National Socialists of Hitler's revolution, neocon-
servatives believe that they have a monopoly on virtue and the right to impose hegemony on the rest of
the world. Neoconservative conquests began in the Middle East because oil and Israel, with which neo-
cons are closely allied, are both in the Middle East.
The American oil giant, UNOCAL, had plans for an oil and gas pipeline through Afghanistan, but the Taliban
were not sufficiently cooperative. The US invasion of Afghanistan was used to install Hamid Karzai, who
had been on UNOCAL's payroll, as puppet prime minister. US neoconservative Zalmay Khalilzad, who
also had been on UNOCAL's payroll, was installed as US ambassador to Afghanistan.
Two years later Khalilzad was appointed US ambassador to Iraq. American oil companies have been given
control over the exploitation of Iraq's oil resources.
The Israeli relationship is perhaps even more important. In 1996 Richard Perle and the usual collection of
neocons proposed that all of Israel's enemies in the Middle East be overthrown. "Israel's enemies" consist
of the Muslim countries not in the hands of US puppets or allies. For decades Israel has been stealing
Palestine from the Palestinians such that today there is not enough of Palestine left to comprise an inde-
pendent country.
The US and Israeli governments blame Iran, Iraq, and Syria for aiding and abetting Palestinian resistance
to Israel's theft of Palestine.
The Bush-Cheney regime came to power with the plans drawn to attack the remaining independent
countries in the Middle East and with neoconservatives in office to implement the plans. However, an
excuse was required. Neoconservatives had called for "a new Pearl Harbor," and 9/11 provided the
propaganda event needed in order to stampede the public and Congress into war. Neoconservative
Philip Zelikow was put in charge of the 9/11 Commission Report to make certain no uncomfortable
facts emerged.
The neoconservatives have had enormous help from the corporate media, from Christian evangelicals,
particularly from the "Rapture Evangelicals," from flag-waving superpatriots, and from the military-industrial
complex whose profits have prospered. But the fact remains that the dozen men named in the second
paragraph above were able to overthrow the US Constitution and launch military aggression under the
guise of a preventive/preemptive "war against terrorism."
When the American people caught on that the "war on terror" was a cloak for wars of aggression, they put Democrats in control of Congress in order to apply a brake to the regime's warmongering. However, the
Democrats have proven to be impotent to stop the neoconservative drive to wider war and, perhaps, world conflagration.
We are witnessing the triumph of a dozen evil men over American democracy and a free press.
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