http://counterpunch.org/roberts01292006.html
From Counterpunch:
Paul Craig Roberts: 'Blind ignorance: Polls show many
Americans are simply dumber than Bush'
Two recent polls, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll
and a New York Times/CBS News poll, indicate why Bush is getting away
with impeachable offenses. Half of the US population is incapable of
acquiring, processing and understanding information.
Much of the problem is the media itself, which serves
as a disinformation agency for the Bush administration. Fox
"News" and right-wing talk radio are the worst, but with
propagandistic outlets setting the standard for truth and patriotism, all of
the media is affected to some degree.
Despite the media's failure, about half the population
has managed to discern that the US invasion of Iraq has not made them
safer and that the Bush administration's assault on civil liberties
is not a necessary component of the war on terror. The problem, thus,
lies with the absence of due diligence on the part of the other half of the
population.
Consider the New York Times/CBS poll. Sixty-four
percent of the respondents have concerns about losing civil liberties
as a result of anti-terrorism measures put in place by President
Bush. Yet, 53 percent approve of spying without obtaining court warrants "in
order to reduce the threat of terrorism."
Why does any American think that spying without a
warrant has any more effect in reducing the threat of terrorism than spying
with a warrant? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Bush
is disobeying, requires the executive to obtain from a secret panel
of federal judges a warrant for spying on Americans. The purpose of the
law is to prevent a president from spying for partisan political reasons.
The law permits the president to spy first (for 72 hours) and then
come to the court for permission. As the court meets in secret, spying
without a warrant is no more effective in reducing the threat of terrorism
than spying with a warrant.
Instead of explaining this basic truth, the media has
played along with the Bush administration and formulated the question as
a trade-off between civil liberties and protection from
terrorists. This formulation is false and nonsensical. Why does the media enable
the Bush administration to escape accountability for illegal
behavior by putting false and misleading choices before the people?
The LA Times/Bloomberg poll has equally striking
anomalies. Only 43 percent said they approved of Bush's performance as
president. But a majority believe Bush's policies have made the US more
secure.
It is extraordinary that anyone would think Americans
are safer as a result of Bush invading two Muslim countries and
constantly threatening two more with military attack. The invasions and
threats have caused a dramatic swing in Muslim sentiment away from the US.
Prior to Bush's invasion of Iraq, a large majority of Muslims had a
favorable opinion of America. Now only about 5 percent do.
A number of US commanders in Iraq and many Middle East
experts have told the American public that the three year-old war in
Iraq is serving both to recruit and to train terrorists for al Qaeda, which
has grown many times its former size. Moreover, the US military has
concluded that al Qaeda has succeeded in having its members elected to
the new Iraqi government.
We have seen similar developments both in Egypt and in
Pakistan. In the recent Egyptian elections, the radical Muslim
Brotherhood, despite being suppressed by the Egyptian government, won a large
number of seats. In Pakistan elements friendly or neutral toward al Qaeda
control about half of the government. In Iraq, Bush's invasion has
replaced secular Sunnis with Islamist Shia allied with Iran.
And now with the triumph of Hamas in the Palestinian
election, we see the total failure of Bush's Middle Eastern policy.
Bush has succeeded in displacing secular moderates from Middle Eastern
governments and replacing them with Islamic extremists. It boggles the
mind that this disastrous result makes Americans feel safer!
What does it say for democracy that half of the
American population is unable to draw a rational conclusion from unambiguous
facts?
Americans share this disability with the Bush
administration. According to news reports, the Bush administration is stunned by
the election victory of the radical Islamist Hamas Party, which
swept the US-financed Fatah Party from office. Why is the Bush
administration astonished?
The Bush administration is astonished because it
stupidly believes that hundreds of millions of Muslims should be grateful
that the US has interfered in their internal affairs for 60 years,
setting up colonies and puppet rulers to suppress their aspirations and to
achieve, instead, purposes of the US government.
Americans need desperately to understand that 95
percent of all Muslim terrorists in the world were created in the past three
years by Bush's invasion of Iraq.
Americans need desperately to comprehend that if Bush
attacks Iran and Syria, as he intends, terrorism will explode, and
American civil liberties will disappear into a thirty year war that
will bankrupt the United States.
The total lack of rationality and competence in the
White House and the inability of half of the US population to acquire and
understand information are far larger threats to Americans than
terrorism.
America has become a rogue nation, flying blind,
guided only by ignorance and hubris. A terrible catastrophe awaits.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall
Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National
Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be
reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com.
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