The Cracks in the Façade are Widening

Excerpted from Axis of Logic:

An enemy is needed

Since the United States wants to hold on to the image that it is a somewhat civilized nation, an enemy has to be created. It is of no importance whether the enemy has any existence in the world of reality or if it is just a product of propaganda, as long as the world can be convinced that there is one, and one that presents a real threat to the United States and to the world.

Communism or its cousin, socialism, was an extremely handy pretext for world-wide attacks, from Vietnam, to Chile to Panama to Nicaragua. And in cases where communism had nothing to do with the embattled regime, the myth was created. After the great debacle of Vietnam, the empire ran out of breath for a while. During Nixon/Kissinger, Reagan, followed by H.W. Bush and Clinton, however, the American people was convinced again and again that the Communist dragon was threatening to consume us. Warm-up exercises to prove our military superiority were conducted in Chile, Central America, Sudan and Iraq, among other places - these wars usually undertaken with the principal aim of boosting a tottering public image of the incumbent president . The object was also generally to prove that the empire still had the fangs to carry out vicious and, from an international viewpoint, totally illegal attacks to consolidate its superiority.

After the end of the cold war, a new enemy had to be created. After the neoconservative clique in Washington laid their plans for a take-over of the world through an endless war, the administrations, from Reagan on, played the conquer-it-all game with great conviction. Then came September 11, like manna from heaven, and the road was open to world domination. And so the war on terror was launched on the world scene with great hysteria and fanfare. Fear would be the clue to keep Americans subdued. Continually renewed fear would keep the American population from getting out of order and try massive anti-war demonstrations and civil disobedience acts. People had to be made to believe that they were in danger and needed to be defended against the Big Evil. So the propaganda machine was set to convince people, with renewed vigor, that the United States was the most morally upstanding country in the world.

Orwellian double-speak was employed with much success - Pax Americana for eternal war, liberation of Iraq for the theft of Iraqi oil resources, the greatest democracy in the world for a nation where civil rights were increasingly curtailed and popular voting rights were made to be a meaningless concept, through the multiple ways of rigging the election process.

War, however, was essential not just to invade and dominate countries like Iraq and whatever countries are going to follow, but in the interest of the arms industry that was being enriched in the most obscene way. The huge corporations, the oil and arms industry in the first place, were all the big players in this winner-take-all game for Money and Power.

Emphasis added by editor. Read article from the beginning here...