How America Was Lost From 9/11 to the Police/Welfare State

Even as the view of America as a rogue state consolidates abroad,
Americans appear largely bystanders at the spectacle of their
government running amok. People forget the myriad instances of their
government's flouting of the Constitution and international legal norms--
if ever they were aware of them in the first place--accepting to live in
the increasingly pernicious "new normal" with little protest.
This remarkable anthology of columns documents and reminds us of
the extraordinary developments that, in their accumulation, have led to
the destruction of accountable and moral government in the US.
Few American commentators have cut more clearly through the
deepening deceit, hypocrisy and outright criminality that has infested
official Washington since 9/11 than Paul Craig Roberts. His scathing
critique sheds much-needed light on the country's impending
nightmare-economic collapse, internal repression, ongoing wars, and
rising rejection by friends and foes alike.
How America Was Lost marks Roberts as one of the most prescient and
courageous moral commentators in America today.
America's fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the
government's 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government's account of 9/11 is contradicted
by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the
US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for
investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one
accepts the premise upon which they are based.
These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington's deficits and
threaten the U.S. dollar's role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that
the budget deficits put on the dollar's value have put Social Security and Medicare on
the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank
Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after
them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called
"entitlements" as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll
taxes all their working lives.
With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with
American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war
being Washington's greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with
civil liberty sacrificed to the "war on terror," the liberty and prosperity of the American
people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.
The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now
run their course.