The Humiliation of America by Olmert
14/01/2009
By Paul Craig
Roberts
January 14, 2009 "Information
Clearinghouse" -- - “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 UN
resolution. “On September 11th,
President Bush is interrupted while
reading a story to school children and
told the World Trade Center had been
hit--and he went on reading. Now, Olmert
calls about a UN 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 US 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 UN vote.
Israeli politicians have been bragging
for decades about the control they
exercise over the US 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 33-1 on January 12 to condemn
Israel for grave offenses against human
rights.
On January 13, the London Times reported
that Israelis have 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 US government is complicit in the
war crimes.
Yet in his farewell press conference on
January 12, Bush said that the world
respects America for its compassion.
The compassion of bombing a UN 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: (1) Putting up the “mission
accomplished” banner on the aircraft
carrier, which, he said, “sent the wrong
message,” and (2) 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.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21755.htm
“The battle...has to begin here. In America. The
only institution more powerful than the U.S. government
is American civil society. The rest of us are subjects
of slave nations. We are by no means powerless, but you
have the power of proximity. You have access to the
Imperial Palace and the Emperor’s chambers. Empire’s
conquests are being carried out in your name.”
Arundhati Roy