Paul Craig Roberts, was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of The Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. This erstwhile Reaganite quotes the following statement from Pravda in his article Two Morons: Bush and Saakashvili :

Paul Craig Roberts concludes: “The US is not a superpower. It is a bankrupt farce run by imbeciles who were installed by stolen elections arranged by Karl Rove and Diebold. It is a laughing stock, that ignorantly affronts and attempts to bully an enormous country equipped with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons” (CounterPunch). Shocking when one reflects that Paul Craig Roberts was a prominent Reaganite!

We are now being forced to face a number of myths: Myth no. 1. Reagan won the Cold War. Myth no. 2. We live in a post-industrial age. Myth no. 3. The United States is the only super-power.

If we were in a post-industrial age, we would not be trying to set up NATO in all the states of the former Soviet Union in order to break the Russian monopoly on Central Asian oil. If we had left the industrial age, we wouldn’t be competing with the Chinese for oil. Obviously we are willing to risk a nuclear war in order to control the energy sources, necessary for life in an industrial era.

I am not inclined to see things from the Russian point of view, so correct me if I am wrong: Couldn’t any fool see that the Russians have their own peculiar version of a Monroe Doctrine? And can’t any fool see that if the United States doesn’t want Russian missiles in Cuba, the Russians don’t want NATO forces in Georgia.

George Bush once said of Putin:

Obama has wisely kept his mouth shut with respect to Georgia, as much as possible. McCain continues to talk big while carrying a wet noodle. Unless he wants to launch the nukes.

Why are you so quick to say, “We are all Georgians,” Mr. McCain? I am not prepared to follow you there. We are both old enough to remember that Joseph Stalin is Georgia’s most important contribution to the history of our times. In fact, whenever we hear of Georgia, Stalin is our first if not our only association. Georgia is the victim of Russia in the same way that Austria is the victim of Germany. The worst crimes of the “evil empire” were perpetrated by a Georgian. I am not prepared to blow up the world for Georgia’s newfound national integrity.

What is McCain proposing to do, follow in Napoleon’s footsteps with a march on Moscow? This is typical McCainism, patriotic bravado, backed up, in this instance, by good ol’ Joe Lieberman. Let us hope and pray that all this dangerous posturing is purely for domestic consumption. Aside from its control of gas and oil reserves, Russia’s trump card is, of course, increased support for Iran’s nuclear program. McCain supports the very Bush policies that provoked this crisis. His saber-rattling could be the start of something big.

Bush is dispatching Condoleezza Rice to Paris and then Tbilisi and sending military and Naval forces with “humanitarian aid and medical supplies.” Uh huh.

Let McCain have the presidency, then he can go ahead a blow up the world. Why should I care? I am sixty six, and five months older than the late Isaac Hayes. As for the McCain supporters, they will continue to sell bravado — even when they see their children dying from radiation sickness, their hair falling off, their skins peeling away.

Source: Wilson J. Moses' Blog

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Another View

Georgia on My Mind

 By David McReynolds

Like all things, the conflict in Georgia is complex. Complex enough that it is easy to get lost in the details and miss the main issue. In the immediate situation two things are clear, one being that a number of people have been killed, and the other being that it was Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili who started the military action, not the Russians. The primary responsibility for the loss of life rests with him and his European and US backers. . . .

The US had pushed for missile defense systems to be installed virtually on the borders of Russia. Putin had made it very clear that at some point a price would be paid. That price is now being paid in Georgia, which in an almost insane act of hubris, the US sought to bring into NATO.

It is time for the Europeans to take matters into their own hands and reject the very concept of NATO. NATO which, created as a shield against the Soviets, became an engine of war in the Balkans, which has given support to the invasion of Iraq, and which has troops in Afghanistan. How in the name of God did NATO's mission ever extend to Asia?

Russia's actions, violent as they have been (and again, I note, the violence was in response to that of Georgian leaders), reflect a deep unease in many parts of the world that the US, already in a state of economic collapse, is exporting military interventions far from its borders. There have been no Russian actions since the fall of the USSR (and, leaving aside the invasion of Afghanistan, none during the time of the USSR) that begin to match the US actions in Iraq, in Vietnam, in Cambodia, in Laos, in its support for its client state, Israel, which had established apartheid in Palestine, and in Afghanistan, where we are currently repeating the unhappy experience of the Soviets, and of the British before them.

David McReynolds was for several decades on the staff of War Resisters League, Chair at one time of War Resisters International, and twice the Socialist Party's Presidential candidate. He is retired and lives on Manhattan's Lower East Side with his two cats. He can be reached at: dmcreynolds@nyc.rr.com .

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The Puppet Masters Behind Georgia President Saakashvili—F. William Engdahl—The controversy over the Georgian surprise military attacks on South Ossetia and Abkhazia on 8.8.08 makes a closer look at the controversial Georgian President and his puppet masters important. An examination shows 41 year old Mikhail Saakashvili to be a ruthless and corrupt totalitarian who is tied to not only the US NATO establishment, but also to the Israeli military and intelligence establishment. The famous “Rose Revolution” of November 2003 that forced the ageing Edouard Shevardnadze from power and swept the then 36 year old US university graduate into power was run and financed by the US State Department, the Soros Foundations, and agencies tied to the Pentagon and US intelligence community.

 Mihkail Saakashvili was deliberately placed in power in one of the most sophisticated US regime change operations, using ostensibly private NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) to create an atmosphere of popular protest against the existing regime of former Soviet Foreign Minister Edouard Shevardnadze, who was no longer useful to Washington when he began to make a deal with Moscow over energy pipelines and privatizations. Rense.com

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Georgia: Background to War—U.S. military ties to countries on or near Russia’s borders have caused alarm in Moscow — much as it would in Washington if Russia was arming Canada and Mexico. Provocative acts by the U.S. since the end of the Cold War have included the expansion of NATO up to Russia’s western borders; the creation of U.S. military bases in Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other former Soviet Republics along Russia’s southern flank; U.S. support for Kosovo’s independence over Moscow’s objections; and the current plans to station a U.S. missile defense system in Central Europe. The Bush administration’s push to add Georgia and the Ukraine to NATO as well would leave a situation in which U.S. military forces or U.S.-armed and trained forces were encircling Russia.

It should be noted that among the biggest boosters of Georgian membership in NATO are John McCain and his chief foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann, a leading player in the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq who was a paid lobbyist for the Saakashvili government as recently as last March. These U.S. actions toward Russia don’t justify Moscow’s invasion of Georgia, but they are certainly contributing factors. And if Saakashvili didn’t feel that he was the darling of Washington, he might not have been so quick to invade South Ossetia in the first place, and this war might not have happened. CommonDreams

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Russia to Start Georgia Pullout on Monday—The Bush administration has struggled to respond to Russia's invasion of its smaller U.S.-backed neighbor, which Moscow ruled for most of the two centuries before the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.Georgia, which has sought NATO membership, launched a massive barrage Aug. 7 to try to take control of South Ossetia. The Russian army quickly overwhelmed its neighbor's forces and drove deep into Georgia, raising fears that of a long-term Russian occupation.

Saakashvili alleged that Russian forces, far from withdrawing as the West has demanded, had moved closer to the capital Saturday and — some of his trademark bluster still intact — vowed to defend Tbilisi if necessary. He also accused Russia of ethnic cleansing and said Georgia would not accept a future presence of Russian peacekeepers. Medvedev told French President Nicolas Sarkozy that Russian forces would begin their withdrawal Monday, moving toward South Ossetia, according to the Kremlin.

He stopped short of promising they would return to Russia, suggesting that Russia could maintain a sizable force in South Ossetia. That would likely fuel fears that Russia could seek to annex the region, which — like Abkhazia — broke from government control in the 1990s and has declared independence. AOL

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Georgia On My Mind— Is the Georgia War the “October surprise” for the fall elections as Scheer suggests? The Republicans need a crisis so they can argue that only McCain has the experience to handle it. The Iran bugaboo is wearing thin, and the polls show overwhelming opposition to a war with Teheran. China is playing nice, and, in any case, it is not a good idea to pick a fight with someone who can call in its loans and bankrupt you.

But there is always the big, bad Russian bear.

This is an inordinately dangerous situation. The Bush Administration has sent U.S. troops into Georgia, and it is not inconceivable that Russians and Americans might end up shooting at one another. Wars have a tendency to get out of hand, which is one reason why it is good to avoid them.

But avoiding war means avoiding the kind of policies that make war a possibility. If you have a strategy that says you have the right to determine what happens in the world, and then go about surrounding your potential competitors with military bases and destabilizing weapons systems, sooner or later someone is going to push back. A hundred years ago that would lead to tragedy. In today’s nuclear-armed world, it is an existential issue.

In the short run the solution is a ceasefire, withdrawal of troops, and a pledge not to use force in the future.

But the problem that brought about the recent war is the result of policies that the U.S. and its allies have followed since the end of the Cold War. A real solution would be: 

To do less it to hold the world hostage to the actions of a few who might at any moment hurl us all into a war that none would survive. CounterPunch

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South Ossetia and the Remaking of the Post-Soviet World— Small as it seems to be, the tiny little place that few have ever heard of—South Ossetia—in fact has changed the nature of the post-Soviet world. Now countries have learned not to muck around with the Russians.  They have always been a hard country to bargain with. Now they're saying: if you push us hard enough, we'll also use military power. That's a new dimension. . . . In Soviet times, South Ossetia was an autonomous district and Abkhazia was an autonomous Soviet republic. They had this official autonomy, but in fact they were dominated completely by Georgia, particularly during the Stalin period, when [Stalin's secret police boss Lavrenty] Beria was close to Stalin. Much resentment developed. There was a kind of Georgianization that took place in those regions.

When the Soviet Union began to disintegrate, a very radical nationalist, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was elected president in Georgia. He declared "Georgia for the Georgians." They were going to have an ethno-national republic, and the other peoples, who were 30 percent of the population (hundreds of thousands of Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Muslim Georgians, and, of course, Abkhazians and Ossetians), did not figure in their vision. The Abkhazians and Ossetians rebelled and, with Russian help, declared their autonomy and drove the Georgians out. There are hundreds of thousands of Georgian refugees from those areas now in Georgia. Roughly around 1993-94, around the time the Russians were negotiating the armistice in Nagorno-Karabagh between Armenia and Azerbaijan, they also negotiated a similar armistice in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The Ossetians and Abkhazians want to be in Russia or independent. Russia never wanted to annex them and bring them fully to Russia because of the international law of territorial integrity. Russia's position is that you can't alter borders without mutual agreement. (In other words, they are against the independence of Kosovo for good reason, because that would then justify Chechnya's revolt). The Russians have held that principle, but when the U.S. backed Kosovo's independence, Putin remarked that if Kosovo can do it, why not Abkhazia and South Ossetia as well? Zcommunications

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The Mindlessness is Total: Are You Ready for Nuclear War?

It is obvious that American foreign policy, with its goal of ringing Russia with US military bases, is leading directly to nuclear war.  Every American needs to realize this fact. The US government's insane hegemonic foreign policy is a direct threat to life on the planet. Russia has made no threats against America.  The post-Soviet Russian government has sought to cooperate with the US and Europe.  Russia has made it clear over and over that it is prepared to obey international law and treaties.  It is the Americans who have thrown international law and treaties into the trash can, not the Russians. In order to keep the billions of dollars in profits flowing to its contributors in the US military-security complex, the Bush Regime has rekindled the cold war.  As American living standards decline and the prospects for university graduates deteriorate, "our" leaders in Washington commit us to a hundred years of war. If you desire to be poor, oppressed, and eventually vaporized in a nuclear war, vote Republican.—Paul Craig Roberts 

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Dear Rudy,

Can there be something fishy about this guy Craig Roberts?   Might he be an agent provocateur?  Sure he is correct about the hegemonic objectives of the USA, but he seems to be giving Russia the benefit of too many doubts.   After all, the Russians do have their own hegemonic objectives.  Why is he not accusing both sides of the same diabolical brinksmanship?   If there ever was a case for "moral equivalency," one of the neo-cons favorite terms, this would seem to be it.  But the Russians are simply demonstrating that Putin is capable of the same sort of war crime as Bush.  Neither side is made up of angels.   Both Washington and Moscow are corrupt and each side has its allotment of mindless risk-takers.  Each side is using the crimes of the other to justify its own.

Is Craig Roberts saying "let a hundred flowers flourish," so they can be nipped in the bud?  Is he employing Maoist tactics as part of a CIA plot?   I am not certain, and I wouldn't want to go around quoting him recklessly.—Wilson

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Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth

Can there be something fishy about this guy Craig Roberts? Wilson

Yes, I found it strange that a Reagan conservative appears twice within weeks in a left-wing online journal (Two Morons: Bush and Saakashvili and The Mindlessness is Total: Are You Ready for Nuclear War?). Maybe the saying is true, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Central in the last piece is background of the struggle within the Republican Party between traditional Reaganites and proto-neocons. The neocons eventually won out. Here’s a piece of that argument:

Whatever Paul Craig Roberts’s ultimate intentions, we may never know. Clearly, in the last two pieces he has provided fuel or tools by which to attack Bush and McCain. My view is that we should use it for our work in defeating the Republicans and their candidate for the presidency. It is a thousand times more potent than the approach used by Obama enthusiasts. Information is powerful, and insider information is even more powerful. But it is a double edged sword. It cuts both ways—at Obama and McCain. Obama enthusiasts are afraid of any open discussion on Obama's stance on the issues—foreign or domestic.

These Obama enthusiasts have muddied the water with their romantic view (we must have a black president) and fear-mongering tactics about McCain by name-calling, rather than drawing a true portrait of Obama and the issues he supports and his movement to the right and a true portrait of McCain and the real dangers he represents. In short the black Obama enthusiasts have tried to squash an open debate among blacks. They want blacks to go to the polls like cattle on the basis of race, which is quite ironic, in that their demi-god is not a black nationalist. Obama himself would said that his candidacy is not about race or his blackness. Those sort of campaign tactics are not very helpful. They are not very helpful in providing a clear picture of what is at stake. They rely too heavily on emotions and ad hominem.

These kinds of Obama supporters have no real trust of the people to make informed, critical decisions. Persons like Paul Craig Roberts and white progressives like Paul Street are more useful and enlightening . Here's Paul Street:

The Obama enthusiasts are ready to cut a black man's throat if he says something like that and other items that appear in Street's article, this one and others.

In short, as far as Roberts or Street, I am not for looking a gift horse in the mouth.— Rudy

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The Bush Administration Checkmated in Georgia—It is hard not to conclude that Russian prime minister goaded the rash Saakashvili into invading South Ossetia by encouraging Abkhazian and South Ossetian irregulars to attack Georgian outposts and villages on the peripheries of the two enclaves. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reportedly told Saakashvili not to respond to such provocations when she met with him in July. Apparently her advice fell on deaf ears. Far more enticing, it seems, was her promise of strong U.S. backing for Georgia's rapid entry into NATO. Other American leaders, including Senator John McCain, assured Saakashvili of unwavering U.S. support. Whatever was said in these private conversations, the Georgian president seems to have interpreted them as a green light for his adventuristic impulses. On August 7th, by all accounts, his forces invaded South Ossetia and attacked its capital city of Tskhinvali, giving Putin what he long craved -- a seemingly legitimate excuse to invade Georgia and demonstrate the complete vulnerability of Clinton's (and now Bush's) vaunted energy corridor.

Today, the Georgian army is in shambles, the BTC and South Caucasus gas pipelines are within range of Russian firepower, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia have declared their independence, quickly receiving Russian recognition. TomDispatch

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posted 13 August 2008