Fearmongers

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Fearmongers

The Republican National Committee has shown what President George W. Bush's
re-election campaign will be about: fearmongering. Well, he's pretty good at
warmongering, so why not play the fear card?

The essence of the RNC's first commercial was that if you don't re-elect
Bush, the big, bad boogeyman will get you. You should remember that it was
on Mr. Bush's watch that the big, bad boogeyman got us on Sept. 11, 2001. So
far as we know, Mr. Bush didn't have a clue.

You should also remember that two years later, the Bush administration has:
(1) failed to identify and capture the anthrax killer; (2) failed to capture
or kill Osama bin Laden, the actual boogeyman who got us; (3) failed to
capture or kill Saddam Hussein; and (4) failed to capture or kill Mullah
Omar of Taliban fame.

Worse, rather than going after the terrorists who actually attacked us, Mr.
Bush has invited all of the world's terrorists to attack us by declaring war
on them and has gotten us bogged down in two guerrilla wars. Whatever
happened to the peace dividends? You certainly can't find them in our $400
billion military budget.

The president's war on terror is a flop. Terror is merely a tactic, not an
entity, and those who employ the tactic of terror do so because of American
policies that they find highly offensive. Bush, of course, has made no
effort whatsoever to change any policies and in fact has aggravated the
situation by writing a blank check to the Israeli government to kill and
brutalize as many Palestinians as it wishes.

Our hypocritical support of Israel is one of the Middle East's main beefs
about the country. Whatever the Israelis do is OK; whatever the Palestinians
do is wrong.

The secret of the game afoot is that Mr. Bush has no desire to win the war
on terrorism. What he wants is perpetual war, because that means perpetually
enhancing the power of government.

Some years ago, a book circulated that purported to be an exposé of a
meeting held by the nation's elite. They were alarmed at the fall of
communism and needed to find a new enemy to maintain the war state that has
been America since 1941. They chose Islam.

While I expect the book was apocryphal and no such formal meeting took
place, it is nevertheless necessary to always have an enemy at the gate if
you want to maintain a powerful central government and equally powerful
military-industrial complex. That's a trick as old as the Roman Empire.

First it was fascism, then communism and now Islam. In the meantime, our own
country grows less and less free and more and more in debt while those who
profit from the war state rake in their billions of dollars.

You as a citizen ought not to fall for this fearmongering. All we have to do
is cut the apron strings from Israel and pull our troops out of the Middle
East, where they have no business being anyway, and Middle East terrorism
directed toward us would evaporate overnight. We have no natural conflict
with the Arab world or it with us, and most assuredly Islam is not our
enemy.

People seem to forget that Islam has been around since the 8th century A.D.
The original Arab empire filled the vacuum caused by the fall of Rome. The
Ottoman Empire had nothing to do with spreading Islam per se. Islam opposes
coerced conversions, despite what some American ignoramuses might have told
you.

The truth is, the only enemies we have are those our own government is
manufacturing to justify a powerful central government that is sucking the
wealth and liberty out of this country like some monstrous leech.

There is no need to be $6 trillion in debt, there is no need to maintain a
$400 billion defense budget, and there is darn sure no need to give up our
liberty in the name of security.


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"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so
long as I'm the dictator." - GW Bush 12/18/2000.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that
we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
---Theodore Roosevelt

"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of
Iraq."
-- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,