[Peace-discuss] Europe’s Complicity in Evil

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Europe’s Complicity in Evil
by Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts272.html
(9-9-09)

Address to Mut zur Ethik Conference, "Sovereignty or Imperialism," 
Feldkirch, Austria, September 5, 2009

There is a widespread supposition that Obama, being black and a member 
of an oppressed race, will imbue US foreign policy with a higher 
morality than the world experienced from Bush and Clinton. This is a 
delusion.

Obama represents the same ideology of American "exceptionalism" as other 
recent presidents. This ideology designates the United States as The 
Virtuous Nation and supplies the basis for the belief that America has 
the right, indeed the responsibility, to impose its hegemony upon the 
world by bribery or by force. The claim of American exceptionalism 
produces a form of patriotism that blinds the US population to the 
immorality of America’s wars of aggression.

Nothing is any different under Obama. Obama has escalated war in 
Afghanistan; started a new war in Pakistan; tolerated or supported a 
military coup that overthrew the elected president of Honduras; is 
constructing 7 new US military bases in Colombia, South America; is 
going forward with various military projects designed to secure US 
global military hegemony, such as the Prompt Global Strike initiative 
that intends to provide the US with the capability to strike anywhere on 
earth within 60 minutes; is working to destabilize the government in 
Iran, with military attack still on the table as an option; supports 
America’s new military African Command; intends to encircle Russia with 
US bases in former constituent parts of the Soviet Union; has suborned 
NATO troops as mercenaries in US wars of aggression.

How should Europe react? Europe should disassociate from the United 
States and go into active opposition to US foreign policy. Europeans 
should demand that their governments withdraw from NATO as it serves no 
European interest. The two aggressive militarist powers, the US and 
Israel, should be sanctioned by the UN and embargoed. Instead, Europe is 
complicit in US and Israeli war crimes.

Because of the cold war, Europe is accustomed to following US 
leadership. The financial convenience of the shelter provided by US 
military power negated independent European foreign policies. In effect, 
Western European countries became US puppet states.

How does Europe escape from a subservient relationship of many decades? 
Not easily. The US is accustomed to calling the shots and reacts harshly 
when it meets opposition. For example, French opposition to Bush’s 
invasion of Iraq brought about instant demonization of France by the US 
media and members of Congress.

The US government uses financial sanctions and threatened leaks of 
sensitive personal information gathered by its worldwide spy networks to 
discipline any independent-minded European leader.

Europe is essentially captive and forced to put US interests ahead of 
its own. Consequently, unless Europeans find their courage and discard 
their servile status, Europe will be badgered into more wars and 
eventually led into a devastating war with Russia. One European country 
can do little, but concerted action would be effective. For example, why 
do not Europeans protest that the war criminal Tony Blair was given a 
post in the EU?

The Obama administration’s attitude towards self-determination and the 
sovereignty of the people is that these grand-sounding concepts are 
useful platitudes with which to mask the hegemonic interests of the US 
government. US money and propaganda foment "velvet" or "color" 
revolutions that turn more countries into American puppet states.

The platitudes are useful also to disguise the overthrow of US civil 
liberties, such as habeas corpus, due process, and prohibitions against 
torture and preemptive arrest.

During the cold war era, one of the mainstays of US propaganda against 
the Soviet Union was the inability of Soviet citizens to travel within 
their country without the government’s permission. This indignity has 
now been inflicted upon US citizens. As of September, 2009, US citizens 
can no longer travel within their country by air without the permission 
of the Transport Security Administration.

The Obama administration has adopted the Bush administration’s search 
procedures. Under these rules travelers’ computers, cell phones, and 
other devices can be seized for searches that can take up to 30 days. If 
you are on your way to a meeting and your presentation is on your 
computer and your contacts’ numbers are on your cell phone, you are out 
of luck.

"Terrorist threat" is the excuse for these Gestapo practices. However, 
there have been no domestic acts of terrorism in 8 years. The few 
"plots" that led to arrests were all instigated by FBI agents in order 
to keep the nonexistent threat alive in the public’s mind. Yet, despite 
the lack of any real terrorist threat the police state continues to gain 
ground. Considering the extent of America’s oppression of peoples 
abroad, one would expect much more blowback than has occurred, assuming 
that 9/11 was not itself an inside job designed to provide an excuse for 
America’s wars of aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.

Europe must look beyond the empty American political rhetoric about 
"freedom and democracy" and recognize the emerging Brownshirt American 
State. Democracy is slipping away from America. Its place is being taken 
by an oligarchy of powerful interest groups, such as the financial 
sector, the military/security complex about which President Eisenhower 
warned, and AIPAC. Political campaign contributions from interest groups 
determine the content of US domestic and foreign policy. A country in 
which political elites are above the law and can violate with impunity 
both laws against torture and constitutional protections of civil 
liberties is not a free country.

American political leaders and the American people need Europe’s help in 
order to avoid the degeneration of the American political entity. 
American freedom, as well as sovereign independence elsewhere in the 
world, require criticisms of US foreign and domestic policies. The US 
media, which was concentrated into a few hands during the Clinton 
administration, functions as a Ministry of Propaganda for the 
government. It was the New York Times that gave credibility to the 
neoconservative propaganda and forged documents that were used to sell 
the invasion of Iraq to the public. It was the New York Times that sat 
for one year on the evidence that the Bush administration was committing 
felonies by violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It was 
not until after Bush was re-elected that the reporter was able to force 
his story through editorial opposition. Americans need criticism from 
Europe to compensate for the absence of an independent American media. 
Americans need outside help in order to reach an understanding of the 
immorality of their government’s policies, because they receive no such 
help from their own media. Without Europe’s help, Americans cannot 
regain the spirit of liberty and tolerance bequeathed to them by their 
Founding Fathers. America herself is a victim of the neoconservative and 
liberal internationalist pursuit of US hegemony.

We in America need to hear many voices telling us that it is 
self-defeating to become like an enemy in order to defeat an enemy. As 
Germans learned under Hitler and Russians learned under Stalin, it is 
the internal enemy – the unaccountable elite that controls a country’s 
government – that is the worst and most dangerous enemy.

If America has enemies who are against "freedom and democracy," then 
America herself must make certain not to sacrifice her own civil 
liberties, and the sovereignty of other peoples, to a "war on terror." 
Acts of terror are a small cost compared to the cost of the erosion of 
civil liberties that took centuries to achieve. Far more people died to 
achieve liberty than have died in terrorist attacks.

The United States cannot pretend to be a guarantor of liberty when the 
US government takes away liberty from its own citizens.

The United States cannot pretend to be a guarantor of peace and 
democracy when the US government uses deception to attack other lands on 
false pretenses.

Europe, whose culture was wrecked by 20th-century wars, Europe, which 
has experienced tyranny from the left-wing and from the right-wing, has 
a right to its own voice.

America needs to hear this voice.