WikiLeaks: Verify, Then Trust

Who, Precisely, Is Attacking the World?

By Paul Craig Roberts

The stuck pigs are squealing. To shift the onus from the U.S. State Department, Hillary Clinton paints WikiLeaks release of the diplomatic cables as an attack on the international community. To reveal truth is equivalent, in the eyes of the U.S. government, to an attack on the world.

It is WikiLeaks fault that all those U.S. diplomats wrote a quarter of a million undiplomatic messages about Americas allies, a.k.a. puppet states. It is also WikiLeaks fault that a member of the U.S. government could no longer stomach the cynical ways in which the U.S. government manipulates foreign governments to serve, not their own people, but American interests, and delivered the incriminating evidence to WikiLeaks.

The U.S. government actually thinks that it was WikiLeaks patriotic duty to return the evidence and to identify the leaker. After all, we mustnt let the rest of the world find out what we are up to. They might stop believing our lies.

The influential German magazine Der Spiegel writes: It is nothing short of a political meltdown for U.S. foreign policy.

This might be more a hope than a reality. The Soviet threat during the second half of the 20th century enabled U.S. governments to create institutions that subordinated the interests of other countries to those of the U.S. government. After decades of following U.S. leadership, European leaders know no other way to act. Finding out that the boss badmouths and deceives them is unlikely to light a spirit of independence. At least not until Americas economic collapse becomes more noticeable.

The question is: how much will the press tell us about the documents? Spiegel itself has said that the magazine is permitting the U.S. government to censor, at least in part, what it prints about the leaked material. Most likely, this means the public will not learn the content of the 4,330 documents that are so explosive that they are labeled NOFORN, meaning that foreigners, including presidents, prime ministers, and security services that share information with the CIA are not permitted to read the documents. Possibly, also, the content of the 16,652 cables classified as secret will not be revealed to the public.

Most likely the press, considering their readers interests, will focus on gossip and the unflattering remarks Americans made about their foreign counterparts. It will be good for laughs. Also, the U.S. government will attempt to focus the media in ways that advance U.S. policies.

Indeed, it has already begun. On Nov. 29, National Public Radio emphasized that the cables showed that Iran was isolated even in the Muslim world, making it easier for the Israelis and Americans to attack. The leaked cables reveal that the president of Egypt, an American puppet, hates Iran, and the Saudi Arabian government has been long urging the U.S. government to attack Iran. In other words, Iran is so dangerous to the world that even its co-religionists want Iran wiped off the face of the earth.

NPR presented several nonobjective Iranian experts who denigrated Iran and its leadership and declared that the U.S. government, by resisting its Middle Eastern allies call for bombing Iran, was the moderate in the picture. The fact that President George W. Bush declared Iran to be a member of the axis of evil and threatened repeatedly to attack Iran and that President Obama has continued the threats Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has just reiterated that the U.S. hasnt taken the attack option off the table are not regarded by American Iran experts as indications of anything other than American moderation.

Somehow it did not come across the NPR newscast that it is not Iran but Israel that routinely slaughters civilians in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, and that it is not Iran but the U.S. and its NATO mercenaries who slaughter civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan.

Iran has not invaded any of its neighbors, but the Americans are invading countries halfway around the globe.

The Iranian experts treated the Saudi and Egyptian rulers hatred of Iran as a vindication of the U.S. and Israeli governments demonization of Iran. Not a single Iranian expert was capable of pointing out that the tyrants who rule Egypt and Saudi Arabia fear Iran because the Iranian government represents the interests of Muslims, and the Saudi and Egyptian governments represent the interests of the Americans.

Think what it must feel like to be a tyrant suppressing the aspirations of your own people in order to serve the hegemony of a foreign country, while a nearby Muslim government strives to protect its peoples independence from foreign hegemony.

Undoubtedly, the tyrants become very anxious. What if their oppressed subjects get ideas? Little wonder the Saudi and Egyptian rulers want the Americans to eliminate the independent-minded country that is a bad example for Egyptian and Saudi subjects.

As long as the dollar has enough value that it can be used to purchase foreign governments, information damaging to the U.S. government is unlikely to have much affect. As Alain of Lille said a long time ago, Money is all.

Asia Times

12-50