Virtuous Violence

Note The following is from Lew Rockwell.Com. For those of you who have not heard of it before it is a libertarian group and probably about the only thing we agree on is that the Iraq War is wrong and stupid and the administration of George W. Bush is wrong, dangerous and anything but virtuous.


Virtuous Violence Is Upon Us by Paul Craig Roberts

The United States is in dire straits. Its government is in the hands of people who connect to events neither rationally nor morally.

If President Bush's neoconservative administration were rational, the US would never have invaded Iraq. If Bush's government were moral, it would be ashamed of the carnage and horror it has unleashed in Iraq.

The Bush administration has no doubts. It knows that it is right and virtuous. Bush and the neocons dismiss factual criticisms as evidence that the critics are "against us."

People who know that they are right cannot avoid sinking deeper into mistakes. The Bush administration led the US into a war on the basis of claims that are now known to be untrue. Yet, President Bush and Vice President Cheney consistently refuse to admit that any mistake has been made. The chances are high, therefore, that the second Bush administration will be more disastrous than the first.

" The chances are high, therefore, that the second Bush administration will be more disastrous than the first." With the purges occurring in the CIA and at the State Department it is becoming obvious that Mr Roberts is probably correct. We discussed Bob Herbert's commentary this morning where he points out that there will be no one left to suggest the Bush/Cheney policy might be flawed. We will never know how much of a moderating influence Colin Powell had but there will be no disagreements now.

Mr Roberts concludes his piece with a look at those who support Bush and his Mid East policies. It is not a pretty picture.

Many Bush partisans send me e-mails fiercely advocating "virtuous violence." They do not flinch at the use of nuclear weapons against Muslims who refuse to do as we tell them. These partisans do not doubt for a second that Bush has the right to dictate to Muslims and everyone else (especially the French). Many also express their conviction that all of Bush's critics should be rounded up and sent to the Middle East in time for the first nuke.

These attitudes represent a sharp break from American values and foreign policy. The new conservatives have more in common with the Brownshirt movement that silenced German opposition to Hitler than with America's Founding Fathers.

Bush's reelection, if won fair and square, was won because 20 million Christian evangelicals voted against abortion and homosexuals. However, Bush's neoconservative masters will use his reelection as a mandate for further violence in the Middle East. They intend to set the US on a course of long and debilitating war.

There is no one left in the Bush administration, the CIA, or the military