Will Neocon Fanaticism Destroy America?

Paul Craig Roberts
September 19, 2005, 9:00 am

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The "cakewalk war" is now
two and one-half years old. US casualties (dead and
wounded) number 20,000. As 20,000 is the number of
Iraqi insurgents according to US military commanders,
each insurgent is responsible for one US casualty.

US troops in Iraq number about
150,000. Obviously, US troops have not inflicted
150,000 casualties on the Iraqi insurgents. US troops
have perhaps inflicted 150,000 casualties on the Iraqi
civilian population, primarily women and children who
are the "collateral damage" of the "righteous"
and "virtuous" US invasion that is spreading
civilian deaths all over Mesopotamia in the name of
democracy.

What could the US have possibly
done to give America a worse name than to invade Iraq
and murder its citizens?

According to the September 1

Manufacturing & Technology News, the Government
Accounting Office has reported that over the course of
the cakewalk war, the US military`s use of small caliber
ammunition has risen to 1.8 billion rounds. Think about
that number. If there are 20,000 insurgents, it means
US troops have fired 90,000 rounds at each insurgent. [U.S. Ammo Industry Can`t Keep Up]

Very few have been hit. We don`t
know how many. To avoid the analogy with Vietnam, until
last week the US military studiously avoided body
counts. If 2,000 insurgents have been killed, each death
required 900,000 rounds of ammunition.

The combination of US
government-owned ammo plants and those of US commercial
producers together cannot make bullets as fast as US
troops are firing them. The Bush administration has had
to turn to foreign producers such as Israel Military
Industries.

Think about that. Hollowed out US
industry cannot produce enough ammunition to defeat a
20,000 man insurgency.

US military analysts are beginning
to wonder if the US has been defeated by the
insurgency. Increasingly, Bush administration spokesmen
sound like

"Baghdad Bob." On September 19 the
Washington Post reported that US military
spinmeister Major General Rick Lynch declared

"great success" against the insurgency that had just
inflicted the worst casualties of the war, including a
three-day mortar attack on the "safe" Green Zone.

Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies in Washington
DC, says: "We can`t secure the airport road, can`t
stop the incoming (mortar rounds) into the Green Zone,
can`t stop the killings and kidnappings." The
insurgency controls most of Baghdad and the Sunni
provinces.

With its judgment lost to
frustration, the US military has 40,000 Iraqis in
detention–twice the number of estimated insurgents. Who
are these detainees? According to the

Washington Post,

"Many
of the men detained in Tall Afar last week were rounded
up on the advice of local teenagers who had stepped
forward as informants, at times for what American
soldiers said they suspected amounted to no more than
settling local scores."

Obviously, the US, not knowing who
or where the insurgents are, is just striking blindly,
creating a larger insurgency.

The Iraq government, despite being
backed by the US military, is unable to control
movements across the Iraqi – Syrian border. So the Bush
administration has passed the buck to Syria. Puny Syria
is declared guilty of not doing what the US military
cannot do.

Adam Ereli, the demented US State
Department spokesperson, denounced the Syrian government
for

"permitting" insurgents to cross the border.
The US government cannot prevent a steady stream of one
million Mexicans from illegally crossing its border each
year, but Syria is supposed to be able to stop a couple
hundred foreign fighters from sneaking across its
border.

Ereli misrepresents Syria`s
inability to be "an unwillingness" which
indicates that Syria is consorting with terrorists, not
only in Iraq, but also in Lebanon and Palestine. Does
this sound like Syria being set up for invasion?

According to

news reports, at Ted Forstmann`s annual meeting of
movers and shakers last weekend, US Ambassador to Iraq,
Zalmay Khalilzad, predicted that US troops will soon
enter into Syria. Simultaneously, the Bush
administration is desperately trying to orchestrate a
case that it can use to attack Iran.

Stalemated in Iraq, the White House
moron intends to attack two more countries.

At the Human Rights Conference on
September 9, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia,
Mahathir Mohamad,

described Americans as "people with blood-soaked
hands."

"Who are the terrorists," asked Mahathir, the
Iraqis or the Americans?

The entire world is asking this
question.

Dr.
Roberts, [email
him] a former Associate Editor of the
Wall Street Journal and a
former Contributing Editor of National Review,
was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the
Reagan administration. He is
the author of

The Supply-Side Revolution
and, with Lawrence M. Stratton, of