How America Was Lost: From 9/11 to the Police/Warfare State

Even as the view of America as a rogue state consolidates abroad, Americans appear largely bystanders at the spectacle of their government running amok. People forget the myriad instances of their government’s flouting of the Constitution and international legal norms — if ever they were aware of them in the first place — accepting to live in the increasingly pernicious «new normal» with little protest. This remarkable anthology of columns documents and reminds us of the extraordinary developments that, in their accumulation, have led to the destruction of accountable and moral government in the US. Few American commentators have cut more clearly through the deepening deceit, hypocrisy and outright criminality that has infested official Washington since 9/11 than Paul Craig Roberts. His scathing critique sheds much-needed light on the country’s impending nightmare — economic collapse, internal repression, ongoing wars, and rising rejection by friends and foes alike.

How America Was Lost marks Roberts as one of the most prescient and courageous moral commentators in America today.America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.