"In a government of law, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy." — Justice Louis Brandeis

Is Pakistan responsible for the Mumbai attack in India? No.

Is India's repression of its Muslim minority responsible? No.

Is the United States government responsible? Yes.

The attack on Mumbai required radicalized Muslims. Radicalized Muslims resulted from the United States overthrowing the elected government in Iran and imposed the Shah; from the United States stationing troops in Saudi Arabia; from the United States invading and attempting to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, bombing weddings, funerals and children's soccer games; from the United States violating international and U.S. law by torturing its Muslim victims; from the United States enlisting Pakistan in its war against the Taliban; from the United States violating Pakistan's sovereignty by conducting military operations on Pakistani territory, killing Pakistani civilians; from the U.S. government supporting a half-century of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their lands, towns and villages; from the assault of American culture on Muslim values; from the United States purchasing the government of Egypt to act as its puppet; from U.S. arrogance that America is the supreme arbiter of morality.

As Brandeis said, crime is contagious. Government teaches by example, and America's example is lawlessness. America's brutal crimes against the Muslim world have invited every Muslim to become a law unto himself — a revolutionary. It is not terror that Washington confronts, but revolution.

By illegal, uncivilized and undiplomatic behavior, the United States has stirred Muslim peoples from their long slumber as serfs of Western colonial powers. Some Muslims have had all that they can take, and their fury drives them to rouse a billion of their fellows to throw off the yoke of foreign hegemony.

The arrogant incompetence of American governments brought this conflict to the American people and inflicted it upon the world. By destabilizing Pakistan, the United States lost a puppet and created an opportunity for Muslim revolutionaries to exploit. By enraging India against Pakistan, the Mumbai attack has created new problems for Pakistan that will focus that government's attention away from attacking Taliban sanctuaries on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. If the United States picks up the slack, it will have invaded yet another country and become trapped in a larger quagmire.

Having fomented terrorism, the American government now pretends to be the innocent victim, just as Israelis, having brought about terrorism by driving Palestinians from their homes and villages, pretend to be innocent victims.

Today, European members of NATO, an outdated organization formed to defend Western Europe against Soviet invasion, are sacrificing the lives of their soldiers fighting the American Empire's war in Afghanistan. If America continues to have its way, Europeans will soon be dying in Ukraine, Georgia and Iran.

The American government, which preaches "freedom and democracy," has in the 21st century gone to great extremes to stamp out the U.S. Constitution and the civil liberties that it guarantees. The U.S. government has repudiated the Geneva Conventions and the prohibitions in U.S. statutory law against torture. The U.S. government has set aside habeas corpus, the ancient legal principle guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution that prohibits governments from holding people in prisons without presenting charges. The U.S. government has broken the laws of other nations by kidnapping foreign citizens and transporting them to other lands to be tortured.

These massive crimes have been justified in the name of the "war on terror." In truth, America's crimes foment revolution.

It was the U.S. government that created the "war on terror," which has been used to murder and dispossess millions of Iraqis and Afghans, to imprison U.S. citizens as if they were medieval serfs, and to squander $3 trillion for the sole purpose of enriching Halliburton and the military-security complex.

Investigative journalist John Pilger has shown that the so-called "moral superiority of the West" is a hoax designed to shield from view the self-seeking West's crimes against humanity.

Barack Obama promised change from this destructive behavior, but how does change arise when the most arrogant woman on earth is appointed secretary of state and the rest of the new government is staffed with tried and true Likudniks and servants of the military-security complex?

The change over which Obama will preside will have no American victories. The change will come from America as a failed state, from the dollar dethroned as reserve currency, from America repudiated by its allies and paid puppets, from massive unemployment for which there is no solution, from hyperinflation that produces anarchy.

The day might arrive when Washington is faced with revolution at home as well as abroad.

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.