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.

These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and

threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that

the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on

the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank

Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after

them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called

“entitlements” as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll

taxes all their working lives.

With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with

American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war

being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with

civil liberty sacrificed to the “war on terror,” the liberty and prosperity of the American

people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.

The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now

run their course.

Paul Roberts