I don't want to start a war, but I think this column provides some thought provoking material. It is a very worthwhile read and I would love to see peoples thoughts on this matter.
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The End of Conservatives

The new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy. I went overnight from being an object of conservative adulation to one of derision...

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

I remember when friends would excitedly telephone to report that Rush Limbaugh or G. Gordon Liddy had just read one o f my syndicated columns over the air. That was before I became a critic of the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration, and the neoconservative ideologues who have seized control of the US government.

America has blundered into a needless and dangerous war, and fully half of the country's population is enthusiastic. Many Christians think that war in the Middle East signals "end times" and that they are about to be wafted up to heaven. Many patriots think that, finally, America is standing up for itself and demonstrating its righteous might. Conservatives are taking out their Vietnam frustrations on Iraqis. Karl Rove is wrapping Bush in the protective cloak of war leader. The military-industrial complex is drooling over the profits of war. And neoconservatives are laying the groundwork for Israeli territorial expansion.

The evening before Thanksgiving Rush Limbaugh was on C-Span TV explaining that these glorious developments would have been impossible if talk radio and the conservative movement had not combined to break the power of the liberal media.

In the Thanksgiving issue of National Review, editor Richard Lowry and former editor John O'Sullivan celebrate Bush's reelection triumph over "a hostile press corps." "Try a s they might," crowed O'Sullivan, "they couldn't put Kerry over the top." There was a time when I could rant about the "liberal media" with the best of them. But in recent years I have puzzled over th e precise location of the "liberal media."

Not so long ago I would have identified th e liberal media as the New York Times and Washington Post, CNN and the three T V networks, and National Public Radio. But both the Times and the Post fell fo r the Bush administration's lies about WMD and supported the US invasion of Iraq. On balance CNN, the networks, and NPR have not made an issue of the Bus h administration's changing explanations for the invasion.

Apparently, Rush Limbaugh and National Review think there is a liberal media because the prison torture scandal coul d not be suppressed and a cameraman filmed the execution of a wounded Iraqi prisoner by a US Marine. Do the Village Voice and The Nation comprise the "liberal media"? The Village Voice is known for Nat Hentoff and his columns on civil liberties. Every good conservative believes that civil liberties are liberal because they interfere with the police and let criminal s go free. The Nation favors spending on the poor and disfavors gun rights, bu t I don't see the "liberal hate" in The Nation's feeble pages that Rush Limbaugh was denouncing on C-Span.

In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literall y worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appear s to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush.

The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple conservative frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime, homosexuals, pornography, female promiscuity, abortion, restrictions on praye r in public places, Darwinism and attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are against America. Anyone against the war is against America and i s a liberal. "You are with us or against us."

This is the mindset of delusion, and delusion permits no facts or analysis. Blind emotion rules. Americans are right and everyone else is wrong. End of the debate.

That, gentle reader, is the full extent of talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal Editorial page, National Review , the Weekly Standard, and, indeed, of the entire concentrated corporate media where noncontroversy in the interest of advertising revenue rules.

Once upon a time there was a liberal media . It developed out of the Great Depression and the New Deal. Liberals believed that the private sector is the source of greed that must be restrained by government acting in the public interest. The liberals' mistake was to identify morality with government. Liberals had great suspicion of private power and insufficient suspicion of the power and inclination of government t o do good.

Liberals became Benthamites (after Jeremy Bentham). They believed that as the people controlled government through democracy, there was no reason to fear government power, which should be increased in order to accomplish more good.

The conservative movement that I grew up i n did not share the liberals' abiding faith in government. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have bee n won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it. Thus, the Patriot Act, which permits government to suspend a person's civil liberty by calling him a terrorist with or without proof. Thus, preemptive war, which permits th e President to invade other countries based on unverified assertions.

There is nothing conservative about these positions. To label them conservative is to make the same error as labeling the 1930s German Brownshirts conservative.

American liberals called the Brownshirts "conservative," because the Brownshirts were obviously not liberal. They were ignorant, violent, delusional, and they worshipped a man of no know n distinction. Brownshirts' delusions were protected by an emotional force field. Adulation of power and force prevented Brownshirts from recognizing implications for their country of their reckless doctrines.

Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a criti c is to be an enemy. I went overnight from being an object of conservative adulation to one of derision when I wrote that the US invasion of Iraq was a "strategic blunder."

It is amazing that only a short time ago the Bush administration and its supporters believed that all the US had to do was to appear in Iraq and we would be greeted with flowers. Has there ever been a greater example of delusion? Isn't this on a par with the Children's Crusade against the Saracens in the Middle Ages?

Delusion is still the defining characteristic of the Bush administration. We have smashed Fallujah, a city o f 300,000, only to discover that the 10,000 US Marines are bogged down in the ruins of the city. If the Marines leave, the "defeated" insurgents will return. Meanwhile the insurgents have moved on to destabilize Mosul, a city five times as large. Thus, the call for more US troops.

There are no more troops. Our former allie s are not going to send troops. The only way the Bush administration can continue with its Iraq policy is to reinstate the draft.

When the draft is reinstated, conservative s will loudly proclaim their pride that their sons, fathers, husbands and brothers are going to die for "our freedom." Not a single one of them will be able to explain why destroying Iraqi cities and occupying the ruins are necessary for "our freedom." But this inability will not lessen the enthusiasm for the project. To protect their delusions from "reality-based" critics, they will demand that the critics be arrested for treason and silenced. Many encouraged by talk radio already spea k this way.

Because of the triumph of delusional "new conservatives" and the demise of the liberal media, this war i s different from the Vietnam war. As more Americans are killed and maimed in the pointless carnage, more Americans have a powerful emotional stake that th e war not be lost and not be in vain. Trapped in violence and unable to admit mistake, a reckless administration will escalate.

The rapidly collapsing US dollar is hard evidence that the world sees the US as bankrupt. Flight from the dollar as th e reserve currency will adversely impact American living standards, which are already falling as a result of job outsourcing and offshore production. The U S cannot afford a costly and interminable war.

Falling living standards and inability to impose our will on the Middle East will result in great frustrations that will diminish our country.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He was also Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.

Intersting piece. My first impressive is that this man, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a Mammon Conservative of a pale Republican type. He obviously distrusts and dislikes "red America"
HE WROTE
When the draft is reinstated, conservative s will loudly proclaim their pride that their sons, fathers, husbands and brothers are going to die for "our freedom."

THIS IS OBVIOUSLY FALSE. This new war is a war of professional soldiers. Neither Britain nor the USA is using draftees. I too will be glad to see our troops back home, when the job is done. But we are not going to keep 150,000 troops there indefinitely. And unless we face a massive invasion from a hostile foreign naval power and imminent defeat -something I do nor forsee possible in the near future- the draft will never be reinstated. This man obviously doesn't know many soldiers and Marines. I do. I talk to them when ever I can. No one wants unwilling recruits. No one wants to go back to pre-1973 days. The draft served its purpose admirably 1940 -1953; essentially the WWII generation. But it is not suited for today's warfare. The days of mass armies may be over. They are simply too vulnerable and too expensive.
ROBERTS ALSO WROTE:

The rapidly collapsing US dollar is hard evidence that the world sees the US as bankrupt. Flight from the dollar as th e reserve currency will adversely impact American living standards, which are already falling as a result of job outsourcing and offshore production. The U S cannot afford a costly and interminable war.

HE MAY HAVE A CASE HERE. THERE IS A RISK. I have seen in Arab sources that this is Bin Laden's strategy to bankrupt the USA. But what would be the risk if the old resources of Iraq and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia fell into the hands of a hostile terroristic power? What then of Japan, Australia, Europe and China? Their economies thirst for oil too.
ROBERTS WRITES
Falling living standards and inability to impose our will on the Middle East will result in great frustrations that will diminish our country.
THAT IS HIS ASSERTION and as my Auld Granny used to say, "That's just one many's opinion."
I personally think he is wrong. The reason I think he is wrong is because he is not a Bush supporter. He disdains Bush the way elites disdained Eisenhower and Lincoln. History may not equate Ole W with Lincoln but it may rate him as a near great president like Eisenhower or TR. Having enemies is the mark of a successful man after all. No one hated Mr. Ford or Mr Coolidge. By the way does anyone think LBJ will be ranked higher than Bush? "Landslide Lyndon's reputation has been sliding for years and deservedly so. The fact is LBJ was corrupt and incompetent. He squandered the poltical capital of FDR and sowed the seeds for the decline of the Democratic party. Until the Democrats realize that they are doomed to go the way of the Whigs.

There is a chance that this war will fail. There is a chance that Bin Laden will ultimately win. But in this life you have to take a chance. Sitting back and letting hostile powers build up was not a good option. Wiping out terrorist bases in Afghanistan and eliminating Saddam Hussein, thus securing the oil of Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia for the USA and its allies and denying their resources to our enemies seems to me to be a prudent risk, a necessary risk. History will be the final judge but i think Fallujah and the Iraq campaign will go down in history like Guadalcanal as a turning point in the war against terror. There is no question the Marines performed admirably just as their is no question the Black Watch performed admirably in support as in days of yore recalling the great victorious alliances of WWI and WWII.


I say go Marines, go Army, go Navy, go Air Force go Coast Guard go gallant allies. Hunt down the murdercult wipe them out. Remember 9/11, remember flight 93! Remember the Cole! We have been at war for a long time but we just stood there and took it.

The Europacifists and Mammon Republicans know the price of everything and the value of nothing.