The Other American Dream: The President's Real Goal in Iraq

[Excerpts Throughout]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday, 1 September, 2002

The Other American Dream
By William Rivers Pitt

No other nation on the face of the earth uses the words "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" as the premise for their foundation in government.

There is another American Dream which lurks in shadow, and speaks only in whispers of its designs. This other American Dream runs dark and silent, on rails lubricated by oil, blood and power. It works at all hours of the day and night to achieve its goals. It does not sleep. The existence of this other American Dream places the first one, the real one, the true one, in terrible peril. If this other American Dream is allowed to blossom into its intended potential, the American Dream we speak of to our children will cease completely to exist.

The proponents of this other American Dream look at the world in terms of empire. They seek to achieve hegemony over great swaths of strategically-important territory, and will do whatever is necessary to gain this control. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, they see America as the first truly global superpower. With the use of economic and military might, they seek to gain absolute dominion in the space opened by the fall of our former rival. The term "Globalization" encapsulates only a fraction of the plan.

For many years, the proponents of this other American Dream lingered in neo-conservative think tanks, like the Committee on the Present Danger, where they could only snipe from the fringes. With the rise to power of George W. Bush, in an election that denied him even the pretense of a mandate, these neo-conservative strategists suddenly found themselves walking the halls of power, because Bush was forced in the absence of a mandate to fall back upon his neo-conservative base for support. The other American Dream, alive for so long only in white papers within these think tanks, has become the central framework of American policy.

The proponents of this other American Dream control the military, economic and strategic policy that governs this nation. Their power was greatly increased by a terrorist attack put in motion by the activities of other American officials acting with the same strategy of hegemony and dominion in mind. They continue their work, right now, at this moment. One dream works feverishly, while the other withers and dies.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/09.01A.wrp.am.drm.htm

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President
 
By Neil Mackay

A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.

The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'

http://www.sundayherald.com/27735

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

September 10, 2002

It's Empire Versus Democracy

By Tom Hayden

In the aftermath of September 11, American conservatives launched a political and intellectual offensive to discredit any public questioning of the Bush administration's open-ended, blank-check, undefined war against terrorism. The conservative message, delivered through multiple media outlets, was that dissenters from the Bush administration's war were those who allegedly "blamed America first," that is, dared to explore whether Bin Laden's terrorism was possibly rooted in Western policies toward the Islamic world, the Palestinians, and the oil monarchies of the Middle East.

Some will ask, so what? Isn't the right to dissent a secondary concern when thousands of innocent Americans have been killed in terrorist attacks? A fair question. The truth is that Osama Bin Laden set the stage for this political shift to the right by his strategy of targeting civilians. And Bin Laden is no aberration. Radical Islamic fundamentalism has risen in the vacuum created by the failures of political Arab nationalism (and the end of the Soviet Union, which, whatever else may be said, supported non-religious revolutionary movements). The radical religious-based movements are here to stay.

So it is understandable that the vast majority of Americans responded to September 11 with existential cries for public safety and a military response. And if Bin Laden or his successor carry out further attacks against American civilians, the politics of repression will deepen. The problem is that conservatives inside and outside the Bush administration are seeking to take advantage of America's understandable fears to push a right-wing agenda that would not otherwise be palatable. In short, they are playing patriot games with the nation's future.

The Wall Street Journal gave the secret away in an October 2001 editorial declaring that September 11 created a unique political opportunity to advance the whole Republican-conservative platform. Worse, the real conservative agenda is to create an American empire, not simply rout out the al-Qaida organization. No sooner had the September 11 attacks occurred than the Wall Street Journal's editorial writer, Max Boot, published "The Case for American Empire" in the conservative organ, the Weekly Standard. Boot endorsed a return to nineteenth century British imperialism, this time under American hegemony. "Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets" (see NYT, Mar. 31, 2002). The orchestrated call for empire was "out of the closet," according to conservative columnist Charles Krautheimer, and was echoed in the works of historians Paul Kennedy and Robert D. Kaplan (who found nice things to say about Emperor Tiberius, namely that he used force to "preserve a peace that was favorable to Rome").

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14082

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

September 10, 2002
The Boston Globe

Iraq War Hawks Have Plans to Reshape Entire Mideast

by John Donnelly and Anthony Shadid

WASHINGTON - As the Bush administration debates going to war against Iraq, its most hawkish members are pushing a sweeping vision for the Middle East that sees the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq as merely a first step in the region's transformation.

The argument for reshaping the political landscape in the Mideast has been pushed for years by some Washington think tanks and in hawkish circles. It is now being considered as a possible US policy with the ascent of key hard-liners in the administration - from Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith in the Pentagon to John Hannah and Lewis Libby on the vice president's staff and John Bolton in the State Department, analysts and officials say.

Iraq, the hawks argue, is just the first piece of the puzzle. After an ouster of Hussein, they say, the United States will have more leverage to act against Syria and Iran, will be in a better position to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and will be able to rely less on Saudi oil.

The thinking does not represent official US policy. But increasingly the argument has served as a justification for a military attack against Iraq, and elements of the strategy have emerged in speeches by administration officials, most prominently Vice President Dick Cheney.

''The goal is not just a new regime in Iraq. The goal is a new Middle East,'' said Raad Alkadiri, an Iraq analyst with PFC, a Washington-based energy consulting organization. ''The goal has been and remains one of the main driving factors of preemptive action against Iraq.''

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0910-01.htm
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 8, 2002

Bush's Mideast plan: Conquer and divide

By ERIC MARGOLIS

NEW YORK -- Arms inspections are a "hoax," said Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister, in a forthright and chilling interview with ABC News last week. "War is inevitable."

Aziz is the smartest, most credible member of President Saddam Hussein's otherwise sinister regime - my view after covering Iraq since 1976. What the U.S. wants is not "regime change" in Iraq but rather "region change," charged Aziz. He tersely summed up the Bush administration's reasons for war against Iraq: "Oil and Israel."

Aziz's undiplomatic language underlines growing fears across the Mideast that U.S. President George Bush intends to use a manufactured war against Iraq to redraw the political map of the region, put it under permanent U.S. military control, and seize its vast oil resources.

These are not idle alarms.

Senior administration officials openly speak of invading Iran, Syria, Libya and Lebanon. Influential neo-conservative think-tanks in Washington have deployed a small army of "experts" on TV, urging the U.S. to remove governments deemed unfriendly to the U.S. and Israel.

Washington's most powerful lobbies - for oil and Israel - are urging the U.S. to seize Mideast oil and crush any regional states that might one day challenge Israel's nuclear monopoly or regional dominance.

The radical transformation of the Mideast being considered by the Bush administration is potentially the biggest political change since the notorious 1916 Sykes-Picot Treaty in which victorious Britain and France carved up the Ottoman-ruled region.

http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_dec8.html
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_nov10.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

September 5, 2002
The Guardian/UK

The Real Goal is the Seizure of Saudi Oil
Iraq is no threat. Bush wants war to keep US control of the region

by Mo Mowlam

What is most chilling is that the hawks in the Bush administration must know the risks involved. They must be aware of the anti-American feeling throughout the Middle East. They must be aware of the fear in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that a war against Iraq could unleash revolutions, disposing of pro-western governments, and replacing them with populist anti-American Islamist fundamentalist regimes. We should all remember the Islamist revolution in Iran. The Shah was backed by the Americans, but he couldn't stand against the will of the people. And it is because I am sure that they fully understand the consequences of their actions, that I am most afraid. I am drawn to the conclusion that they must want to create such mayhem.

But that is what Bush seems to want to do. Why is he so determined to take the risk? The key country in the Middle East, as far as the Americans are concerned, is Saudi Arabia: the country with the largest oil reserves in the world, the country that has been prepared to calm the oil markets, producing more when prices are too high and less when there is a glut. The Saudi royal family has been rewarded with best friend status by the west for its cooperation. There has been little concern that the government is undemocratic and breaches human rights, nor that it is in the grip of an extreme form of Islam. With American support it has been believed that the regime can be protected and will do what is necessary to secure a supply of oil to the west at reasonably stable prices.

Since September 11, however, it has become increasingly apparent to the US administration that the Saudi regime is vulnerable. Both on the streets and in the leading families, including the royal family, there are increasingly anti-western voices. Osama bin Laden is just one prominent example. The love affair with America is ending. Reports of the removal of billions of dollars of Saudi investment from the United States may be difficult to quantify, but they are true. The possibility of the world's largest oil reserves falling into the hands of an anti-American, militant Islamist government is becoming ever more likely - and this is unacceptable.

The Americans know they cannot stop such a revolution. They must therefore hope that they can control the Saudi oil fields, if not the government. And what better way to do that than to have a large military force in the field at the time of such disruption. In the name of saving the west, these vital assets could be seized and controlled. No longer would the US have to depend on a corrupt and unpopular royal family to keep it supplied with cheap oil. If there is chaos in the region, the US armed forces could be seen as a global savior. Under cover of the war on terrorism, the war to secure oil supplies could be waged.

This whole affair has nothing to do with a threat from Iraq - there isn't one. It has nothing to do with the war against terrorism or with morality. Saddam Hussein is obviously an evil man, but when we were selling arms to him to keep the Iranians in check he was the same evil man he is today. He was a pawn then and is a pawn now. In the same way he served western interests then, he is now the distraction for the sleight of hand to protect the west's supply of oil.

Mo Mowlam was a member of Tony Blair's cabinet from 1997-2001

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0905-06.htm

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

9/29/02
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The president's real goal in Iraq

By JAY BOOKMAN

The official story on Iraq has never made sense. The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial. In fact, it was hard to believe that smart people in the Bush administration would start a major war based on such flimsy evidence.
 
The pieces just didn't fit. Something else had to be going on; something was missing.

In recent days, those missing pieces have finally begun to fall into place. As it turns out, this is not really about Iraq. It is not about weapons of mass destruction, or terrorism, or Saddam, or U.N. resolutions.

This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the "American imperialists" that our enemies always claimed we were.

Once that is understood, other mysteries solve themselves. For example, why does the administration seem unconcerned about an exit strategy from Iraq once Saddam is toppled?

Because we won't be leaving. Having conquered Iraq, the United States will create permanent military bases in that country from which to dominate the Middle East, including neighboring Iran.

In an interview Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brushed aside that suggestion, noting that the United States does not covet other nations' territory. That may be true, but 57 years after World War II ended, we still have major bases in Germany and Japan. We will do the same in Iraq.

And why has the administration dismissed the option of containing and deterring Iraq, as we had the Soviet Union for 45 years? Because even if it worked, containment and deterrence would not allow the expansion of American power. Besides, they are beneath us as an empire. Rome did not stoop to containment; it conquered. And so should we.

Among the architects of this would-be American Empire are a group of brilliant and powerful people who now hold key positions in the Bush administration: They envision the creation and enforcement of what they call a worldwide "Pax Americana," or American peace. But so far, the American people have not appreciated the true extent of that ambition.

Part of it's laid out in the National Security Strategy, a document in which each administration outlines its approach to defending the country. The Bush administration plan, released Sept. 20, marks a significant departure from previous approaches, a change that it attributes largely to the attacks of Sept. 11.

To address the terrorism threat, the president's report lays out a newly aggressive military and foreign policy, embracing pre-emptive attack against perceived enemies. It speaks in blunt terms of what it calls "American internationalism," of ignoring international opinion if that suits U.S. interests. "The best defense is a good offense," the document asserts.

It dismisses deterrence as a Cold War relic and instead talks of "convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities."

In essence, it lays out a plan for permanent U.S. military and economic domination of every region on the globe, unfettered by international treaty or concern. And to make that plan a reality, it envisions a stark expansion of our global military presence.

"The United States will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia," the document warns, "as well as temporary access arrangements for the long-distance deployment of U.S. troops."

The report's repeated references to terrorism are misleading, however, because the approach of the new National Security Strategy was clearly not inspired by the events of Sept. 11. They can be found in much the same language in a report issued in September 2000 by the Project for the New American Century, a group of conservative interventionists outraged by the thought that the United States might be forfeiting its chance at a global empire.

"At no time in history has the international security order been as conducive to American interests and ideals," the report said. stated two years ago. "The challenge of this coming century is to preserve and enhance this 'American peace.' "

Familiar themes

Overall, that 2000 report reads like a blueprint for current Bush defense policy. Most of what it advocates, the Bush administration has tried to accomplish. For example, the project report urged the repudiation of the anti-ballistic missile treaty and a commitment to a global missile defense system. The administration has taken that course.

It recommended that to project sufficient power worldwide to enforce Pax Americana, the United States would have to increase defense spending from 3 percent of gross domestic product to as much as 3.8 percent. For next year, the Bush administration has requested a defense budget of $379 billion, almost exactly 3.8 percent of GDP.

It advocates the "transformation" of the U.S. military to meet its expanded obligations, including the cancellation of such outmoded defense programs as the Crusader artillery system. That's exactly the message being preached by Rumsfeld and others.

It urges the development of small nuclear warheads "required in targeting the very deep, underground hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries." This year the GOP-led U.S. House gave the Pentagon the green light to develop such a weapon, called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, while the Senate has so far balked.

That close tracking of recommendation with current policy is hardly surprising, given the current positions of the people who contributed to the 2000 report.

Paul Wolfowitz is now deputy defense secretary. John Bolton is undersecretary of state. Stephen Cambone is head of the Pentagon's Office of Program, Analysis and Evaluation. Eliot Cohen and Devon Cross are members of the Defense Policy Board, which advises Rumsfeld. I. Lewis Libby is chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Dov Zakheim is comptroller for the Defense Department.

'Constabulary duties'

Because they were still just private citizens in 2000, the authors of the project report could be more frank and less diplomatic than they were in drafting the National Security Strategy. Back in 2000, they clearly identified Iran, Iraq and North Korea as primary short-term targets, well before President Bush tagged them as the Axis of Evil. In their report, they criticize the fact that in war planning against North Korea and Iraq, "past Pentagon wargames have given little or no consideration to the force requirements necessary not only to defeat an attack but to remove these regimes from power."

To preserve the Pax Americana, the report says U.S. forces will be required to perform "constabulary duties" -- the United States acting as policeman of the world -- and says that such actions "demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations."

To meet those responsibilities, and to ensure that no country dares to challenge the United States, the report advocates a much larger military presence spread over more of the globe, in addition to the roughly 130 nations in which U.S. troops are already deployed.

More specifically, they argue that we need permanent military bases in the Middle East, in Southeast Europe, in Latin America and in Southeast Asia, where no such bases now exist. That helps to explain another of the mysteries of our post-Sept. 11 reaction, in which the Bush administration rushed to install U.S. troops in Georgia and the Philippines, as well as our eagerness to send military advisers to assist in the civil war in Colombia.

The 2000 report directly acknowledges its debt to a still earlier document, drafted in 1992 by the Defense Department. That document had also envisioned the United States as a colossus astride the world, imposing its will and keeping world peace through military and economic power. When leaked in final draft form, however, the proposal drew so much criticism that it was hastily withdrawn and repudiated by the first President Bush.

Effect on allies

The defense secretary in 1992 was Richard Cheney; the document was drafted by Wolfowitz, who at the time was defense undersecretary for policy.

The potential implications of a Pax Americana are immense.

One is the effect on our allies. Once we assert the unilateral right to act as the world's policeman, our allies will quickly recede into the background. Eventually, we will be forced to spend American wealth and American blood protecting the peace while other nations redirect their wealth to such things as health care for their citizenry.

Donald Kagan, a professor of classical Greek history at Yale and an influential advocate of a more aggressive foreign policy -- he served as co-chairman of the 2000 New Century project -- acknowledges that likelihood.

"If [our allies] want a free ride, and they probably will, we can't stop that," he says. But he also argues that the United States, given its unique position, has no choice but to act anyway.

"You saw the movie 'High Noon'? he asks. "We're Gary Cooper."

Accepting the Cooper role would be an historic change in who we are as a nation, and in how we operate in the international arena. Candidate Bush certainly did not campaign on such a change. It is not something that he or others have dared to discuss honestly with the American people. To the contrary, in his foreign policy debate with Al Gore, Bush pointedly advocated a more humble foreign policy, a position calculated to appeal to voters leery of military intervention.

For the same reason, Kagan and others shy away from terms such as empire, understanding its connotations. But they also argue that it would be naive and dangerous to reject the role that history has thrust upon us. Kagan, for example, willingly embraces the idea that the United States would establish permanent military bases in a post-war Iraq.

"I think that's highly possible," he says. "We will probably need a major concentration of forces in the Middle East over a long period of time. That will come at a price, but think of the price of not having it. When we have economic problems, it's been caused by disruptions in our oil supply. If we have a force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies."

Costly global commitment

Rumsfeld and Kagan believe that a successful war against Iraq will produce other benefits, such as serving an object lesson for nations such as Iran and Syria. Rumsfeld, as befits his sensitive position, puts it rather gently. If a regime change were to take place in Iraq, other nations pursuing weapons of mass destruction "would get the message that having them . . . is attracting attention that is not favorable and is not helpful," he says.

Kagan is more blunt.

"People worry a lot about how the Arab street is going to react," he notes. "Well, I see that the Arab street has gotten very, very quiet since we started blowing things up."

The cost of such a global commitment would be enormous. In 2000, we spent $281 billion on our military, which was more than the next 11 nations combined. By 2003, our expenditures will have risen to $378 billion. In other words, the increase in our defense budget from 1999-2003 will be more than the total amount spent annually by China, our next largest competitor.

The lure of empire is ancient and powerful, and over the millennia it has driven men to commit terrible crimes on its behalf. But with the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, a global empire was essentially laid at the feet of the United States. To the chagrin of some, we did not seize it at the time, in large part because the American people have never been comfortable with themselves as a New Rome.

Now, more than a decade later, the events of Sept. 11 have given those advocates of empire a new opportunity to press their case with a new president. So in debating whether to invade Iraq, we are really debating the role that the United States will play in the years and decades to come.

Are peace and security best achieved by seeking strong alliances and international consensus, led by the United States? Or is it necessary to take a more unilateral approach, accepting and enhancing the global dominance that, according to some, history has thrust upon us?

If we do decide to seize empire, we should make that decision knowingly, as a democracy. The price of maintaining an empire is always high. Kagan and others argue that the price of rejecting it would be higher still.

That's what this is about.

Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/0902/29bookman.html

--------------------------------------------------

CONTRIBUTORS TO 2000 REPORT

"Rebuilding America's Defenses," a 2000 report by the Project for the New American Century, listed 27 people as having attended meetings or contributed papers in preparation of the report. Among them are six who have since assumed key defense and foreign policy positions in the Bush administration. And the report seems to have become a blueprint for Bush's foreign and defense policy.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 1, 2002

The Los Angeles Times

The Sun Can't Set on This Empire Too Soon
The U.S. has no right to indulge in imperialism

by Robert Scheer

It sure smells like imperialism. That's the word historians use when powerful nations grab control of desired resources, be it the gold of the New World or the oil of the Middle East.

Imperialist greed is what "regime change" in Iraq and "anticipatory self-defense" are all about, and all of the rest of the Bush administration's talk about security and democracy is a bunch of malarkey.

In the laundry list of reasons the Bush team has been trotting out in defense of a unilateral invasion of Iraq, oil is never mentioned. Is the fact that Iraq holds a huge pool of oil a piddling footnote to this debate? Is that Gulf War protest sign, "No Blood for Oil," too cynical, even passe? Perhaps we should ask National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who served as a Chevron director and had an oil tanker named after her.

Despite her corporate connections, Rice is a scholar, and she should know her history: For 50 years, we and the British before us have assumed the same neocolonial posture vis-a-vis Iraq as we do with Saudi Arabia and its surrounding sheikdoms and Iran. The Gulf War, fought to save U.S. corporate interests in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, was only the latest example of this heavy-handed policy. Think Halliburton and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The strategy is pretty much the same as that drawn up by the Romans: Find and support local strongmen who can deliver the goods to the imperial capital, come hell or high water. How they treat their own people is not our business; we have never cared about democracy in the Mideast unless one of its dictators happened to fail to toe our line.

That is why our CIA facilitated the rise to power of Iraq's Baath party and ultimately the succession of Saddam Hussein as its current leader. The first Bush administration supported Hussein, providing him with the means to wage chemical and biological war, up to the day he invaded Kuwait, another of our client states. After his defeat, we became totally disinterested in the freedom of the people of the countries we had rescued. So much so, in fact, that Saudi Arabia was allowed to thrive as the world capital of religious hatred and the major sponsor of terrorists, producing Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers who gave us the Sept. 11 tragedy.

The same contempt for democracy has marked our policy toward Iran, that other member of the "axis of evil" we helped create. When Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh moved to eliminate foreign control over Iran's oil, the CIA and its British counterpart overthrew him in 1953. Despite our babbling about democracy, we had no compunction about replacing the elected Mossadegh with a guy who claimed the hereditary right to the throne as shah of all shahs.

When the shah dared to act in the interest of his people--and his own bank account--by bolstering the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in the push for higher oil prices, we came to regard him, too, as expendable.

Even our support of Israel had less to do with the struggle of a brave people for a deserved homeland and more with the usefulness of that country as an agent of our Mideast ambitions and a reliable ally in offsetting expanding Soviet influence in the region.

With the end of the Cold War, we were at a loss for a noble rationale to justify our heavy Mideast presence, which has been enormously profitable to some American corporations and industries that are well represented in this administration. Support democracy? We do subsidize Israel, the region's only functioning democracy, but our motives look less than pure when we fawn over cooperative dictatorships such as the regime in the United Arab Emirates, which forked over $6.4 billion to Lockheed Martin for fighter jets and gives us access to its oil.

Having just fought to free themselves from one of history's great empires, this nation's founding founders fiercely and repeatedly warned of the risks of imperial ambitions. Because of this, most Americans, whether liberal or conservative, grasp the fundamental truth that foreign entanglements destabilize, backfire and cost too much in lives and dollars.

Instead of exploiting our natural patriotism to fight a nonsensical war, our government should forgo the temptations of empire.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1001-01.htm

The Dilemma of Sustaining an American Empire (1-2-03)
Lessons from the fall of an empire
Empires Always Serve the Rulers, Not the Ruled (1-10-03)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

-Hermann Goering, Hitler's #2 man, president of the Reichstag, Nazi Party, and Luftwaffe Commander in Chief: before being sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.... And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------