Who Is Wrecking America?

By Paul Craig Roberts

03/09/08 "ICH " -- - Does the liberal-left have a clue? I sometimes think
not.

In his book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?," Thomas Frank made the
excellent point that the Karl Rove Republicans take advantage of ordinary's
people's frustrations and resentments to lead them into voting against their
best interest.

Frank's new book, "The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule," lacks the
insight that distinguished his previous book. Why does Frank think that
conservatives or liberals rule?

Neither rule. America is ruled by organized interest groups with money to
elect candidates who serve their interests. Frank's book does not even
mention the Israel Lobby, which bleeds Americans for the sake of Israeli
territorial expansion. Check the index. Israel is not there.

Does Frank think that rapture evangelicals are conservative, that Christian
Zionists are conservative? If so, where did he learn his theology?

Frank can't tell the difference between Ronald Reagan and Cheney/Bush. He
conflates the collection of opportunists and fanatics that comprise the Bush
Party with the Reagan conservatives who ended stagflation and the cold war.
The adventurer, Jack Abramoff, is Frank's epitome of a conservative.
Abramoff is the most mentioned person in Frank's story. In Frank's view,
conservatives are out to ruin everyone except the rich.

But it was the Clinton administration that rigged the Consumer Price Index
in order to cheat retired people out of their Social Security cost of living
increases.

It was the Clinton administration that vanished discouraged workers from the
unemployment rolls.

It was the Clinton administration that wrecked "effective government" by
encouraging early civil service retirements in order to make way for quota
hires.

Why doesn't Frank know that the "Reagan deficit" was due to the collapse of
inflation below the forecast, thus reducing the flow of inflated revenues
into the government's budget, whereas the Bush deficit is a result of what
Nobel Democrat economist Joe Stiglitz has calculated to be a $3 trillion
dollar war in the Middle East?

Frank doesn't want to know. Like so many fighting ideological battles, he
just wants to damn "the enemy."

But who is Frank's enemy? He calls them "conservatives." But the Bush regime
is a neoconservative regime. Neoconservatives, despite the name, are not
conservatives. They have taken over formerly conservative publications,
think tanks, and foundations and driven out the conservatives.

Neoconservatives are in the tradition of the French Jacobins of the 18th
century. Having had the French Revolution, the revolutionaries thought that
they should take it to all of Europe. Napoleon exercised French hegemony
over Europe. The American neocons desire American hegemony over the world.

The true American conservative does not believe in foreign wars. In US
history, conservatives were derided by liberals as "isolationists."

There is nothing conservative about launching wars of aggression on the
basis of lies and deception in order to control the direction of oil
pipelines and to enhance Israeli territorial expansion.

Frank misses all of this.

And what a pity that is. A false conservative-liberal fight distracts
attention from the growing police state that is destroying civil liberties
for all Americans. It obscures the real motives of policies in behalf of
special interests that are leading to nuclear confrontation with Russia and
China.

What is wrecking America is not conservatives, but a neoconservative
ideology of US hegemony.

What is wrecking America is the "impeachment-is-off-the-table" twins, Nancy
Pelosi and John Conyers.

What is wrecking America is the Democratic Party, which was put in control
of the House and Senate in the 2006 congressional elections to stop the
gratuitous wars and gestapo police, but, instead, has continued to cooperate
with the Cheney/Bush regime in behalf of war and police repression, such as
we witnessed at the Republican National Convention.

Frank's book, "The Wrecking Crew" falls into the scapegoat category of
blaming the innocent and irrelevant. The Democrat Party could impeach
Cheney/Bush and cut off funding for the wars and corrupt military contracts.
But they do nothing and get a free pass from Frank.

"The Wrecking Crew" does have one virtue. Frank shows that the Republicans
have spawned a new generation of brownshirts that lust to imprison, torture,
and kill people. These ignorant bloodthirsty thugs see enemies everywhere
and fervently desire to nuke them all. The Republican brownshirts are
equally willing to kill American critics of the Bush regime as to kill
Taliban and al Qaeda.

The latest "enemy" is Russia. The Bush regime, complicit in its Georgian
puppet's war crimes against South Ossetia, is attempting to hide its
responsibility for ethnic cleansing by demonizing Russia. With every threat
the Bush regime issues against Russia, the war drums beat louder. Yet, the
print and TV media and Democratic Party have jumped on the war wagon.

The rapture evangelicals and the neocons are euphoric at the prospect of
nuclear war. Frank's misguided barrage at conservatives, who are a brake on
war and the police state, hastens end times.