The Humiliation of America

"Early Friday morning, the secretary of state was considering bringing the cease-fire resolution to a UNSC vote, and we didn't want her to vote for it." Olmert said. "I said, 'Get President Bush on the phone.' They tried and told me he was in the middle of a lecture in Philadelphia. I said 'I'm not interested, I need to speak to him now.' He got down from the podium, went out and took the phone call.

"Let me see if I understand this," wrote a friend in response to news reports that Israeli Prime Minister Olmert ordered President Bush from the podium where he was giving a speech to receive Israel's instructions about how the United States had to vote on the U.N. resolution. "On September 11th, President Bush is interrupted while reading a story to schoolchildren and told the World Trade Center had been hit — and he went on reading. Now, Olmert calls about a U.N. resolution when Bush is giving a speech and Bush leaves the stage to take the call. There exists no greater example of a master-servant relationship."

Olmert gloated as he told Israelis how he had shamed U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice by preventing the American secretary of state from supporting a resolution that she had helped to craft. Olmert proudly related how he had interrupted President Bush's speech in order to give Bush his marching orders on the U.N. vote.

Israeli politicians have been bragging for decades about the control they exercise over the U.S. government. In his final press conference, President Bush, deluded to the very end, said that the whole world respects America. In fact, when the world looks at America, what it sees is an Israeli colony.

Responding to mounting reports from the Red Cross and human rights organizations of Israel's massive war crimes in Gaza, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted 33 to one on Jan. 12 to condemn Israel for grave offenses against human rights.

On Jan. 13, the London Times reported that Israelis had gathered on a hillside overlooking Gaza to enjoy the slaughter of Palestinians in what the Times calls "the ultimate spectator sport."

It is American-supplied F-16 fighter jets, helicopter gunships, missiles and bombs that are destroying the civilian infrastructure of Gaza and murdering the Palestinians who have been packed into the tiny strip of land. What is happening to the Palestinians herded into the Gaza Ghetto is happening because of American money and weapons. It is just as much an attack by the United States as an attack by Israel. The U.S. government is complicit in the war crimes.

Yet in his farewell press conference on Jan.

12, Bush said that the world respects America for its compassion.

The compassion of bombing a U.N. school for girls?

The compassion of herding 100 Palestinians into one house and then shelling it?

The compassion of bombing hospitals and mosques?

The compassion of depriving 1.5 million Palestinians of food, medicine and energy?

The compassion of violently overthrowing the democratically elected Hamas government?

The compassion of blowing up the infrastructure of one of the poorest and most deprived people on earth?

The compassion of abstaining from a Security Council vote condemning these actions?

And this is a repeat of what the Israelis and Americans did to Lebanon in 2006, what the Americans did to Iraqis for six years and are continuing to do to Afghans after seven years. And still hope to do to the Iranians and Syrians.

In 2002, I designated George W. Bush "the White House Moron." If there ever was any doubt about this designation, Bush's final press conference dispelled it.

Bush talked about connecting the dots, but Bush has failed to connect any dots for eight solid years. "Our" president was a puppet for a cabal led by Dick Cheney and a handful of Jewish neoconservatives, who took control of the Pentagon, the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA and "Homeland Security." From these power positions, the neocon cabal used lies and deception to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, pointless wars that have cost Americans $3 trillion, while millions of Americans lose their jobs, their pensions and their access to health care.

"These obviously very difficult economic times," Bush said in his press conference, "started before my presidency."

Bush has plenty of liberal company in failing to connect a $3 trillion dollar war with hard times. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities blames Bush's tax cut, not the wars, for "the fiscal deterioration."

Bush told the White House press corps, a useless collection of non-journalists, that the two mistakes of his invasion of Iraq were putting up the "mission accomplished" banner on the aircraft carrier — which, he said, "sent the wrong message" — and the absence of the alleged weapons of mass destruction that he used to justify the invasion.

Although Bush now admits that there were not any such weapons in Iraq, Bush said that the invasion was still the right thing to do.

The deaths of 1.25 million Iraqis, the displacement of 4 million Iraqis, and the destruction of a country's infrastructure and economy are merely the collateral damage associated with "bringing freedom and democracy" to the Middle East.

Unless George W. Bush is the best actor in human history, he truly believes what he told the White House press corps.

What Bush did not explain is how America is respected when its people put a moron in charge for eight years.

To find out more about Paul Craig Roberts, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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