This Has Become Routine — Paul Craig Roberts
This Has Become Routine — Paul Craig Roberts
This Has Become Routine
Paul Craig Roberts
In his comment on the mass shootings at the Oregon community college, President Obama said: “This has become routine.”
So have police shootings of unarmed and unresisting Americans.
So have numerous other undesirable and deplorable happenings, such as the foreclosure on the homes of millions of Americans, while the “banks too big to fail” are bailed out with trillions of dollars, and such as foreign policy lies that have destroyed seven countries, bringing the US and Europe millions of refugees.
In addition there are the foreign policy lies that have brought the US and Europe into conflict with Russia, and the economic lies that shield the extraordinary concentration of income and wealth of the One Percent.
Also routine is Washington’s obliteration of weddings, funerals, and medical centers with bombs and drones. Two days after Obama expressed his despair, frustration and anger over the Oregon mass shootings, a US air strike hit a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. According to numerous news reports, at least 19 people were killed, including 12 members of Doctors Without Borders, and another 37 wounded. The US air strike killed one person on the operating table, and intensive care patients burned to death in their beds.
For Washington, these mass murders are only “collateral damage,” nothing warranting a presidential statement displaying despair, anger, and frustration.
Obama says he can do nothing about mass shootings, but he could certainly call off his illegal wars and deep-six his reckless and coercive approach toward Russia before we are incinerated. As Vladimir Putin said at the UN, “We [meaning Russia] can no longer tolerate the state of affairs in the world.”
Putin does not lie. When he says something, he means it.