Rogue nation, US?

Are we a rogue nation? Paul Craig Roberts seems to have that impression, and I tend to agree with him. He has written a good article about it that I found first on the Information Clearinghouse blog, link here,

http://www.informationclearing...

entitled, "American Hegemony is not Guaranteed." That is a deceptively innocent title for what follows. Mr. Roberts is concerned that General Petraeus began to make noises about Iranian influence in Iraq concerning "special groups" and Iranian supplied weapons being used to kill Americans in Iraq, which could be used as justification for an attack on Iran, and responds with an excellent slap-down of such theories.

Here are two of the reasons he gives that Petraeus is lying.

Fact #1: Al Sadr is not allied with Iran. He speaks with an Iraqi voice and has his militia under orders to stand down from conflict. The Badr militia is the Shi'ite militia that is allied with Iran. Why did the US and its Iraqi puppet Maliki attack al Sadr's militia and not the Badr militia or the breakaway elements of Sadr's militia that allegedly now operate as gangs?
Fact #2: The Shi'ite militias and the Sunni insurgents are armed with weapons available from the unsecured weapon stockpiles of Saddam Hussein's army. If Iran were arming Iraqis, the Iraqi insurgents and militias would have armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenades and surface-to-air missiles. These two weapons would neutralize the US advantage by enabling Iraqis to destroy US helicopter gunships, aircraft and tanks. The Iraqis cannot mass their forces as they have no weapons against US air power. To destroy US tanks, Iraqis have to guess the roads US vehicles will travel and bury bombs constructed from artillery shells. The inability to directly attack armor and to defend against air attack denies offensive capability to Iraqis.

He then goes on to belittle the very concept of an attack on Iran, and provides an interesting perception of U.S. weakness, as opposed to its belligerent face. He also provides some interesting scenarios to attack U.S. hegemony, when the affected countries tire of our actions.

With Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea threatened by American hegemonic belligerence, it is not difficult to imagine a scenario that would terminate all pretense of American power: For example, instead of waiting to be attacked, Iran uses its Chinese and Russian anti-ship missiles, against which the US reportedly has poor means of defense, and sinks every ship in the American carrier strike forces that have been foolishly massed in the Persian Gulf, simultaneously taking out the Saudi oil fields and the Green Zone in Baghdad, the headquarters of the US occupation. Shi'ite militias break the US supply lines from Kuwait, and Iranian troops destroy the dispersed US forces in Iraq before they can be concentrated to battle strength.

He also adds a few other possible consequences that could follow from our belligerence. The second scenario is not necessarily provoked by an attack on Iran, but simply because other nations grow tired of our negative dealings and influence. From an economic standpoint, it is perhaps more frightening than the first.

There are other less dramatic scenarios. Why does the US assume that only it can initiate aggression, boycotts, freezes on financial assets of other countries and bans on foreign banks from participation in the international banking system? If the rest of the world were to tire of American aggression or to develop a moral conscience, it would be easy to organize a boycott of America and to ban US banks from participating in the international banking system. Such a boycott would be especially effective at the present time with the balance sheets of US banks impaired by subprime derivatives and the US government dependent on foreign loans in order to finance its day-to-day activities.

He concludes his message by saying that other nations really don't have to put up with us if they choose not to. Our military threat to them, the use of nuclear arms, would result in our own destruction, too.

With apologies for another "the shit is fixin' to hit the fan" essay, but I worry that when people with Mr. Roberts' credentials feel the same way, it may already have been thrown. I do hope we USA'ns have had enough of this "cowboy diplomacy" and manage to elect (if afforded the opportunity) a rational leader.