Even as the view of America as a rogue state consolidates abroad,Americans appear largely bystanders at the spectacle of theirgovernment running amok. People forget the myriad instances of theirgovernment's flouting of the Constitution and international legal norms--if ever they were aware of them in the first place--accepting to live inthe increasingly pernicious "new normal" with little protest.This remarkable anthology of columns documents and reminds us ofthe extraordinary developments that, in their accumulation, have led tothe destruction of accountable and moral government in the US.Few American commentators have cut more clearly through thedeepening deceit, hypocrisy and outright criminality that has infestedofficial Washington since 9/11 than Paul Craig Roberts. His scathingcritique sheds much-needed light on the country's impendingnightmare-economic collapse, internal repression, ongoing wars, andrising rejection by friends and foes alike.How America Was Lost marks Roberts as one of the most prescient andcourageous moral commentators in America today.America's fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought thegovernment's 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government's account of 9/11 is contradictedby much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched theUS on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic forinvestigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when oneaccepts the premise upon which they are based.These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington's deficits andthreaten the U.S. dollar's role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure thatthe budget deficits put on the dollar's value have put Social Security and Medicare onthe chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary HankPaulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also afterthem. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called"entitlements" as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payrolltaxes all their working lives.With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, withAmerican jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with warbeing Washington's greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, withcivil liberty sacrificed to the "war on terror," the liberty and prosperity of the Americanpeople have been thrown into the trash bin of history.The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will nowrun their course.
