Paul Craig Roberts has had an extraordinary career as an academic, journalist, and public servant, as his official biography documents. Named by Forbes Media Guide as one of the top seven journalists in the United States, he's also the recipient of the prestigious Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. Mr. Roberts served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan.
He’s also, as I noted in my recent commentary “Conservatives with Conscience”, an articulate and impassioned critic of the policies of the Bush Administration. After a short email conversation, in which I pointed Mr. Roberts to my post commending his position, Mr. Roberts graciously agreed to a short interview. Our exchange, published unedited below, speaks for itself.
Needlenose: Your recent columns have included some vehement denunciations of the Bush Administration's policies. Can you give us some insight into how your opinions on this evolved: Were you a Bush supporter whose opinion incrementally changed as events unfolded, were you suspicious of this Administration from the beginning, or did some sequence of events trigger your assessment?
Paul Craig Roberts: I object to the word "vehement." I am an honest and forthright critic of the Bush-Cheney regime. Like many Americans, I welcomed the election of Bush as an antidote to Clinton's gratuitous bombing of Serbia and lying to the American people. Bush criticized the idea of America as world policeman and vowed to abandon that role. My attitude toward the Bush administration changed when I saw that the administration intended to use 9/11 as an excuse for unwarranted aggression against Middle Eastern states. I was disturbed already by the presence of so many of the militaristic, anti-democratic neoconservatives that Cheney had placed in powerful policy positions, and when I saw that President Bush and Colin Powell were not checks on the neocon nazis, I concluded that propaganda would extinguish truth and lead us into pointless wars.
Needlenose: You've remarked that Bush and Cheney were potentially subject to impeachment, and even to prosecution for war crimes for their "unprovoked aggression" against Iraq. This is further than even many vehement Bush detractors in the Democratic party are willing to go – what does this say to you about the opposition?
Paul Craig Roberts: There is no political opposition. The Democrats are owned by the same interest groups that own the Republicans and Bush-Cheney.
If Clinton can be impeached by the House for lying about a sexual affair, Bush-Cheney most certainly can be impeached for committing numerous felonies by violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and spying on Americans without warrants; for deceiving Congress, the UN, and the American Public with lies about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction; for 30,000 American casualties and hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi casualties in wars launched by lies; for violating the Geneva Conventions against torture of prisoners; for violating the US Constitution's separation of powers and protection of civil liberties; for ignoring the will of the people and continuing to pursue war despite the objection of a majority of the electorate; for changing US war doctrine to permit nuclear attack on non-nuclear powers; and, perhaps, for permitting or orchestrating the 9/11 attack in order to create a "new Pearl Harbor" to justify wars of aggression against the remaining independent Middle Eastern states.
At the Nuremberg war crime trials after World War II, the US prosecutor, Robert Jackson, declared that Germans were being prosecuted as war criminals because they launched a war of aggression. Under the Nuremberg Standard established by the United States, wars of aggression are war crimes. By invading Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush-Cheney committed war crimes. Israel committed a war crime when it attacked Lebanon. Bush-Cheney are on the brink of committing another war crime by attacking Iran.
Americans should summon the courage to face the fact that they are ruled by a war criminal government that despises them and their civil liberties.
Needlenose: As a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, you must know more than most the financial repercussions of a sudden collapse of the dollar, yet you call for our foreign creditors to "halt Bush's crimes by “dumping the dollar". Is this an extreme position, or are the dangers of this Administration's policies so grave as to warrant this "shock therapy"?
Paul Craig Roberts: It is only a matter of time before the dollar is dumped as successive US governments have seriously abused the reserve currency role of the US dollar. Moreover, the practice of US corporations of offshoring their production for US markets makes it impossible for America to balance its trade deficit. Sooner or later foreigners will realize that they are giving us real goods and services for worthless pieces of paper.
As the dollar is already doomed--indeed, we could not be at war except for the fact that our Japanese and Chinese bankers are financing it--the world as well as America could be saved from disruption of oil supplies, from further inflaming of one billion Muslims against the West, from new military alliances to counter American assertions of hegemony, and from a potential US use of nuclear weapons, the consequences of which could be catastrophic, if Japan or China would simply tell Bush-Cheney that they will not finance another American war of aggression.
Needlenose: In the current political climate, many politicians put support of "their guy" above defense of the Constitutional values we cherish. Some of the "my party right or wrong" crowd must have had some strong reactions to your passionate denunciations of "their guy", Bush. Can you give us some insight into the response your impassioned criticisms have drawn from your conservative colleagues and readers?
Paul Craig Roberts: The low grade morons are incapable of argument or discussion. I have never had an intelligent response from a Bush supporter. All they are capable of is to write: "If you hate America so much, why don't you move to Cuba!"
You are talking about people who are so ignorant and stupid that they are a grave danger to America.
Needlenose: As the Bush Administration escalates the rhetoric against Iran, it seems to many that we're seeing the same movie we saw in Iraq unfolding again. It also seems that Iran has become the "new Zarqawi", a convenient whipping post for all the strategic failures of the Iraq adventure. Can you give us some insight into your judgment on the Iran standoff – is this "crisis" a complete fabrication, do you believe that there is a real danger that's being exaggerated for political purposes, or is this a legitimate concern?
Paul Craig Roberts: There is no crisis except the one orchestrated by the neocon nazis. The neoconservative plan to attack Iran was prepared a decade ago. What the neoconservatives have now is opportunity. The failure of their occupation of Iraq has been turned into a strategic advantage. At the beginning of this year the neocons had their puppet, Bush, begin blaming Iran for the failure of the US forces in Iraq. Bush keeps repeating, and the media echoing, that Iran is arming the Iraqi Sunni insurgency and thereby is responsible for killing Americans. There is no evidence for this absurd accusation, but the Bush-Cheney regime have learned that Americans succumb to propaganda regardless of evidence. Middle East experts point out that the Iraqi insurgency is Sunni, that the Sunnis spend most of their energy killing Iraqi Shi'ites, that Iran is Shi'ite and allied with Iraqi Shi'ites, and that Iran would not arm the enemies of its allies. But Bush-Cheney have learned that Americans fall for whatever lie their government tells them. Americans have forgot that loyalty to country and loyalty to the Constitution is quite different from loyalty to government.
Needlenose: In my previous commentary regarding your columns, I noted that progressives and conservative critics of Bush's policies, even though we may disagree on many issues, should find common ground to resist what we perceive as a dangerous slide towards militarism and totalitarianism. What's your take on this? Could a cross-ideology resistance to Administration abuses be valuable? How would you visualize these forces collaborating to effectively resist this Administration's direction?
Paul Craig Roberts: In my view there are only two kinds of people: those who support the Constitution and those who support an agenda that the Constitution blocks. The latter are enemies of the Constitution and, thereby, the enemies of America. America has no greater enemy than Bush-Cheney and the neocon nazis.
By Rick Freedman
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