[NYTr] Amerika's Day of Reckoning: More on Buchanan's New Book

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Nov 26, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts11262007.html

America's Days of Reckoning

Good-Bye to All That

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Pat Buchanan is too patriotic to come right out and say it, but the
message of his new book, "Day of Reckoning," is that America as we have
known her is finished. Moreover, Naomi Wolf agrees with him. These two
writers of different political persuasions arrive at America's demise
from different directions.

Buchanan explains how hubris, ideology, and greed have torn America
apart. A neoconservative cabal with an alien agenda captured the Bush
administration and committed American blood, energy, and money to
aggression against Muslim countries in the Middle East, while
permitting America's domestic borders to be overrun by immigrants and
exporting the jobs that had made the US an opportunity society. War and
offshoring have taken a savage economic toll while open borders and
diversity have created social and political division.

In her new book, "End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot,"
Wolf explains America's demise in terms of the erosion of freedoms. She
writes that the ten classic steps that are used to close open societies
are currently being taken in the US. Martial law is only a declaration
away.

The Bush administration responded to September 11 by initiating
military aggression in the Middle East and by using fear and the "war
on terror" to implement police state measures at home with legislation,
presidential directives, and executive orders

Overnight the US became a tyranny in which people could be arrested and
incarcerated on the basis of unsubstantiated accusation. Both US
citizens and non-citizens were denied habeas corpus, due process, and
access to attorneys and courts. Congress gave Bush legislation
establishing military tribunals, the procedures of which permit people
to be condemned to death on the basis of secret evidence, hearsay, and
confessions extracted by torture. Nothing of the like has ever been
seen before in the US.

The cancer might have metastasized if the Guantanamo detainees had
actually been the dangerous terrorists and enemy combatants that the
Bush regime declared them to be. Had the administration actually
possessed evidence against the detainees, the Bush regime might have
succeeded in dispensing with the Constitution. Conviction of the
detainees could have led to what Wolf calls a "fascist expansion."
Following the exercise of its new powers, the regime could have
broadened the definition of terrorist to include the regime's critics,
thus pulling citizens in general into tribunals devoid of civil liberty
protections.

It could still turn out this way in the event of another 9/11 attack,
whether real or orchestrated. But momentarily the drive toward tyranny
has been blunted, because the vast majority of detainees turned out to
be hapless individuals sold into American captivity by warlords
responding to the bounty the US paid for "terrorists." Any unprotected
individual was vulnerable to being captured by Afghan and Pakistani
warlords and sold as a "terrorist." The Americans needed to show
results, and the Bush regime needed "terrorists" in order to feed the
fear its propaganda had generated.

In Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany, the absence of evidence would not
have mattered as the judicial system produced the results demanded by
the tyrants. However, the US military had not been sufficiently
corrupted for the Bush regime's Guantanamo agenda to succeed. Honorable
officers, such as Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, were able to discern that
the US government had no information on the detainees and used
interrogations in order to rubber stamp the a priori determination that
a detainee was a terrorist or enemy combatant. Military officers made
these revelations known to real courts before the tribunal process
could establish itself.

CounterPunch writer Andy Worthington's recently published book, "The
Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 759 Detainees in America's Illegal
Prison," proves that the regime's claim that it had hundreds of
dangerous terrorists at Guantanamo was just another Bush administration
lie.

Currently, support for Bush, Cheney, and the neoconservative agenda is
low. However, Congress, the press, and elections have proven to be
feeble opponents of the Bush regime's drive toward war and tyranny. It
remains to be seen whether the regime has sufficient credibility or
audacity to initiate war with Iran or a false flag attack that would
revive the fascist expansion of which Naomi Wolf warns.

The Bush administration has been a catastrophe. Its failures are
unprecedented. Energy prices are at all time highs. The US is deeply in
debt and dependent on foreign creditors. The dollar has lost 60 per
cent of its value against other tradable currencies, and its reserve
currency status, the basis of American power, is in doubt. The US has
lost millions of middle class jobs which have been replaced with low
paid domestic service jobs. Except for the very rich, Americans have
experienced no gains in real income in the 21st century. As the ladders
of upward mobility are dismantled and the middle class struggles and
fails, America is left with a few rich and many poor. America's
reputation and credibility are damaged perhaps beyond repair. Congress
and the press have enabled the executive branch's disregard of the
Constitution and civil liberty. The US is mired in two lost wars which
are pushing Lebanon and nuclear-armed Pakistan into deepening political
crises.

As Buchanan concludes, "Our day of reckoning is at hand."

[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. He
is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:
PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com ]