How our fears are exploited by politicians for political gain without much regard for the truth.

Joe Liebernann’s attack on Dean in which he said that if Dean were President, Saddam Hussein would still be in power was a comment carefully calculated to terrify Americans already brainwashed by the Bush Administration’s insistence that Saddam was somehow responsible for 9/11 and bent on the destruction of the United States, using the really scary WMD which remain unfound in Iraq.  It says more about Lieberman’s having bought the shaky intelligence trumpeted by the Administration than it does about Dean’s qualifications for the Presidency.

Suppose Saddam were still in power, contained by the combined power of the US and Britain.  He would undoubtedly be still playing his game with UN inspections and inspectors.  He would still be brutalizing his own people in order to stay in power and dreaming dreams of being the sole dominant power in the middle east, but unlike Hitler, not of world domination.  He would still not be a threat to the United States or any country in Europe.  His citizens would not be facing the lack of security, electricity, clean water, phone service, gasoline for cars, cooking and heating oil, and work opportunities that they now cope with daily.  Those killed in the invasion would still be alive, as would hundreds of American soldiers.

We successfully contained the Soviet Union for 50 years.  Why was such a policy abandoned for Iraq after only 12?  All of a sudden, we have this new policy of preemptive war which is to guide American Policy in the new century that leads to the possibility that this Administration will attack and destroy any country that dares to disagree with it and develop some means of self-defense.  In this way will the Bushies accomplish little but our increased isolation from the rest of the world and an increased radicalism among the world’s poor and discontented.

Even the rich USA does not have the financial or military resources to create and maintain a Pax Americana after the manner of the Roman Empire. The Wilsonian pipe dream of making the world safe for democracy was debunked after World War 1.  Democracy American style is not for everybody, and you’d think someone would remember the lessons of the “Ugly American” of the 60’s and 70’s. (The Ugly American, by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick was originally published in 1958.  It can still be purchased at amazon.com.)  If anything, this administration and its media supporters seem a throwback to the heady days of the 19th century, Teddy Roosevelt, and “Remember the Maine”, and has just as little respect or use for verifiable facts and the truth.