Thirty Years Ago, “Star Wars” Warned Against Empire. We Didn’t Listen.
By Richard B. Simon
When it first hit screens on May 25, 1977, few perceived “Star Wars” as a political statement. But like all great science fiction, George Lucas’ six-film cycle is extremely political. As “Star Wars” celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, it’s more relevant than ever – and it bears a chilling message for America.
Ultimately, “Star Wars” is the story of Anakin Skywalker, who becomes Darth Vader – and Anakin’s story parallels our own. It’s a warning that democracies which pursue imperialism end up in totalitarianism, and good people who trade their core values for “security” end up enslaved to fear.
Lucas’ understanding of history, imperialism, and power, echoes that of an earlier sci-fi visionary, George Orwell.
Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is about how governments of all ideologies maintain control over the governed. It takes place in a totalitarian, socialist Britain, turned by the United States into “Airstrip One,” a launching pad for resource wars against rival imperial superpowers, Eurasia (Soviet Europe) and Eastasia (China-Japan). It’s eerily prescient. Permanent war and fear are means of social control, allowing Big Brother to control every aspect of life.
Thirty years later, in the wake of Vietnam and Nixon’s “Imperial Presidency,” Lucas reintroduced “Empire” as synonymous with evil. The scrappy Rebellion was a bicentennial echo of the ragtag Minutemen, the stormtroopers an easy reference to the Nazis. Who would have complained in 1977 that “Star Wars”’ blatant anti-imperialism was unpatriotic or un-American?
But after “Revenge of the Sith” (2005), in which Anakin echoes George W. Bush’s false dilemma “either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists,” conservative pundits attacked Lucas for “Bush-bashing.”
It’s a bit more complex than that.
Lucas told Wired he had always intended “Star Wars” to examine how a democracy becomes a dictatorship. And by exploring how dictators rise to power, Lucas predicts the Bush Administration’s machinations – and Congress’ utter failure to keep them in check.
FROM TERROR, AN EMPIRE
We meet Anakin Skywalker in “Episode I: The Phantom Menace” (1999), when two Jedi Knights, Qui Gon Jinn and Obi Wan Kenobi, recognize the boy slave’s unusual power and purchase his freedom to train him. Anakin leaves his home planet vowing to return and free all the slaves, including his mother.
Meanwhile, the well-mannered Senator Palpatine – secretly a Dark Lord of the Sith – is orchestrating his own rise to power. He will use fear and war to become Emperor – and his rise will be Anakin’s fall.
Released eight months after the September 11 attacks, “Episode II: Attack of the Clones” begins with an exploding plane – a “separatist” attack. The parallel is clear. But Palpatine controls the “separatists.” The attack, and the ensuing war, are a ruse to consolidate his power as Emperor.
It’s as close as popular fiction gets to “conspiracy theories” that neoconservatives, who called for a “new Pearl Harbor” in a 2000 policy paper, planned 9/11, or allowed it to happen, to transform U.S. military power into an instrument of global hegemony.
The document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses", is non-fiction; signatories include Cheney aides Stephen Cambone and Scooter Libby, and Iraq War architect Paul Wolfowitz. The think tank’s members include John Bolton, Jeb Bush, Bill Kristol, and Dick Cheney himself. Their goal? Consolidate American Empire and rule the 21st Century as an unchallengeable hyperpower. Hence the name, Project for a New American Century.
Within days of the 9/11 attacks, a terrified Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act and the Authorization of the Use of Military Force with little debate or dissent. Most members never even read the bills, which authorized the War on Terror, allowed the invasion of Iraq, and enabled an expansion of executive power (including secret prisons, wiretapping, and torture) that continues to this day. The 2006 Military Commissions Act removes habeas corpus for anyone designated an “enemy combatant” by the President. The 2006 Patriot Act reauthorization empowers the Secret Service to arrest dissidents, and the White House to replace U.S. Attorneys with “loyal Bushies” – loyal not to the rule of law, but to Bush – without Senate confirmation.
If anything, in “Clones,” the donkeyish Jar Jar Binks is a caricature of Congressional Democrats. Palpatine moves to expand his own power (temporarily, of course, to fight the “separatists.”) He cons Jar Jar, now a Senator, into sponsoring his “Military Creation Act.” The Senate adopts it immediately, clearing the way for Palpatine to become omnipotent.
Palpatine’s secret clone army appears; they are the Stormtroopers who will plague Luke Skywalker and friends. They file into troop transports to familiar, ominous music: “The Imperial March.”
That’s not Lucas’ only warning about our response to 9/11.
Anakin, now a teenage Jedi apprentice, is tormented by dreams of his mother. He finds her, just in time to watch her die. She has been brutalized by burqa-wearing “Sand People.” Full of hatred, Anakin slaughters them, women and children included. Darth Vader’s theme music plays.
It’s just as Yoda warned back in 1999: “Fear is the path of the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
ELIMINATING THE OPPOSITION
By “Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” (2005), Palpatine has used flattery, misinformation, and fear to make Anakin a loyal Palpie. He installs him on the Jedi Council, the high chamber of law and order.
Now Anakin has nightmares about the death of his pregnant wife, Padmé. Palpatine tells him there is a chance to save her, but only through the dark side. Just as the Jedi are racing to remove the Sith Lord from power, Anakin betrays them. Terrified of losing his wife and unborn child, he abandons his own moral code. He becomes Darth Vader, and helps Palpatine execute his checkmate move – the destruction of the Jedi.
As he murders Jedi leader Mace Windu, who has come to his office to arrest him, Palpatine revels in “U-u-unlimited! Power-r-r!” With the Jedi out of the way, nothing can stop him.
It presages what’s happened at the Justice Department.
A year after “Sith”’s release, U.S. Attorney Carol Lam indicted GOP Congressman Duke Cunningham and CIA Executive Director Dusty Foggo. When she told the Justice Department she was investigating a wider plot, the White House forced her to resign, along with other prosecutors pursuing Republicans.
A similar purge took place at CIA immediately after Bush’s re-election. At the time, conservative pundits excoriated CIA operatives (and journalists, and filmmakers, and everyone else) who opposed Bush’s policies as traitors.
Palpatine vilifies the Jedi as traitors, too – they’re such a threat, he declares himself Emperor.
“In order to ensure our security and continuing stability,” he glibly tells the Senate, “the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society, which, I assure you, will last for ten thousand years.”
The senators cheer. “So this is how liberty dies,” Padmé muses. “With thunderous applause.”
The new Emperor dispatches Anakin to murder the “separatist” leaders. The war is over. The dictatorship is in place. And Anakin’s fall is imminent.
RED LIGHTSABER, BLUE LIGHTSABER
That controversial line? Here it is in context: Padmé flies to meet Anakin, but Obi Wan has stowed away aboard her ship. He confronts his pupil.
Lucas isn’t bashing Bush. He’s describing a battle for America’s soul – a cataclysmic duel on the hellacious lava planet Mustafar, named for a village in Iraq.
Heartbroken, Obi Wan de-limbs Anakin and leaves him for dead, literally blistering with hatred as his skin catches fire. The Emperor rescues him and rebuilds him – new limbs, a suit of black armor to protect his scorched flesh, a breathing apparatus that yields his signature hhh-khhh ... and, finally, the mask.
In his anti-imperialist 1936 essay “Shooting an Elephant,” Orwell writes, “When the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys ... For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the ‘natives,’ and so in every crisis he has got to do what the ‘natives’ expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”
(Think Cheney, arguing that we must stay in Iraq, lest Osama bin Laden think we’re cowards.)
Because Anakin abandons his core moral principles, he not only fails to save his family, he destroys it. Blind with rage, he fatally injures Padmé. She dies giving birth. And Anakin is enslaved again, bowing to the Emperor and calling him “Master,” forever.
The next time we meet Vader, in the 1977 film – now called “Episode IV: A New Hope” – he is still fighting the insurgent rebels who oppose the totalitarian Empire. The Emperor has dissolved the Senate. Democracy is dead.
Vader is so lost, he tortures Princess Leia – his daughter – for information (she never submits). When he tortures Han Solo (in 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back”), he doesn’t even ask any questions. It’s torture for torture’s sake. Just like Abu Ghraib. He’s a monster.
He exists only to serve the Emperor.
Later, as they duel – red lightsaber versus blue lightsaber – Vader beseeches his farmboy son, Luke Skywalker, to join him in that service. In “Episode VI: Return of the Jedi,” the Emperor wants Luke to kill the ravaged Vader and take his place. Better still, says Vader, kill the Emperor and rule as father and son.
But Obi Wan has trained Luke for this moment. He won’t kill Vader. He won’t even kill the Emperor. That would mean surrender to the dark side. Instead, Luke allows the Emperor to nearly kill him – and Vader kills the Emperor, to save his son.
Because Luke refuses the dark side, Anakin is redeemed; the tyranny of the Empire is crushed; and freedom is restored. Luke removes his father’s mask.
THE DARK SIDE OF FORCE
Five days after the September 11 attacks, newsman Tim Russert asked Vice President Cheney what kind of tactics the U.S. would use in pursuing the perpetrators.
Cheney responded that America will “have to work ... sort of the dark side, if you will ... That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”
Cheney knew enough to make the reference, but sadly not enough to understand it.
We hated the men who hit us on September 11, and we lashed out with that hatred. We’ve sought to restore order by imposing our will on others, the antithesis of democracy. We voted in fear, and we got a Presidential Administration that sees itself as an all-powerful “unitary executive,” accountable to no one – a war time dictatorship, in a war so permanent, they say we may not even know it when it ends.
Six years into that endless war, Americans look in the mirror and find the iron mask staring back. We’ve become a pariah, seen no longer as a beacon of light, but as a threat to the very global stability we sought to ensure.
Lucas’ message is clear. Once you submit to the dark side, even just a little, the war is lost.
Though it seems the most expedient way to survive in frightening times, America pursues an imperial destiny at the peril of its own freedom. We’re already well down the road to totalitarianism. The groundwork has been lain.
Perhaps the 2006 election was our “New Hope,” with Nancy Pelosi – who represents Lucasfilm’s district – as Rebel Commander Mon Mothma. It remains to be seen whether Congress or a new president will restore democracy and repair America’s place in the world.
First, we must reject the dark side.
By Richard B. Simon
When it first hit screens on May 25, 1977, few perceived “Star Wars” as a political statement. But like all great science fiction, George Lucas’ six-film cycle is extremely political. As “Star Wars” celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, it’s more relevant than ever – and it bears a chilling message for America.
Ultimately, “Star Wars” is the story of Anakin Skywalker, who becomes Darth Vader – and Anakin’s story parallels our own. It’s a warning that democracies which pursue imperialism end up in totalitarianism, and good people who trade their core values for “security” end up enslaved to fear.
Lucas’ understanding of history, imperialism, and power, echoes that of an earlier sci-fi visionary, George Orwell.
Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is about how governments of all ideologies maintain control over the governed. It takes place in a totalitarian, socialist Britain, turned by the United States into “Airstrip One,” a launching pad for resource wars against rival imperial superpowers, Eurasia (Soviet Europe) and Eastasia (China-Japan). It’s eerily prescient. Permanent war and fear are means of social control, allowing Big Brother to control every aspect of life.
Thirty years later, in the wake of Vietnam and Nixon’s “Imperial Presidency,” Lucas reintroduced “Empire” as synonymous with evil. The scrappy Rebellion was a bicentennial echo of the ragtag Minutemen, the stormtroopers an easy reference to the Nazis. Who would have complained in 1977 that “Star Wars”’ blatant anti-imperialism was unpatriotic or un-American?
But after “Revenge of the Sith” (2005), in which Anakin echoes George W. Bush’s false dilemma “either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists,” conservative pundits attacked Lucas for “Bush-bashing.”
It’s a bit more complex than that.
Lucas told Wired he had always intended “Star Wars” to examine how a democracy becomes a dictatorship. And by exploring how dictators rise to power, Lucas predicts the Bush Administration’s machinations – and Congress’ utter failure to keep them in check.
FROM TERROR, AN EMPIRE
We meet Anakin Skywalker in “Episode I: The Phantom Menace” (1999), when two Jedi Knights, Qui Gon Jinn and Obi Wan Kenobi, recognize the boy slave’s unusual power and purchase his freedom to train him. Anakin leaves his home planet vowing to return and free all the slaves, including his mother.
Meanwhile, the well-mannered Senator Palpatine – secretly a Dark Lord of the Sith – is orchestrating his own rise to power. He will use fear and war to become Emperor – and his rise will be Anakin’s fall.
Released eight months after the September 11 attacks, “Episode II: Attack of the Clones” begins with an exploding plane – a “separatist” attack. The parallel is clear. But Palpatine controls the “separatists.” The attack, and the ensuing war, are a ruse to consolidate his power as Emperor.
It’s as close as popular fiction gets to “conspiracy theories” that neoconservatives, who called for a “new Pearl Harbor” in a 2000 policy paper, planned 9/11, or allowed it to happen, to transform U.S. military power into an instrument of global hegemony.
The document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses", is non-fiction; signatories include Cheney aides Stephen Cambone and Scooter Libby, and Iraq War architect Paul Wolfowitz. The think tank’s members include John Bolton, Jeb Bush, Bill Kristol, and Dick Cheney himself. Their goal? Consolidate American Empire and rule the 21st Century as an unchallengeable hyperpower. Hence the name, Project for a New American Century.
Within days of the 9/11 attacks, a terrified Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act and the Authorization of the Use of Military Force with little debate or dissent. Most members never even read the bills, which authorized the War on Terror, allowed the invasion of Iraq, and enabled an expansion of executive power (including secret prisons, wiretapping, and torture) that continues to this day. The 2006 Military Commissions Act removes habeas corpus for anyone designated an “enemy combatant” by the President. The 2006 Patriot Act reauthorization empowers the Secret Service to arrest dissidents, and the White House to replace U.S. Attorneys with “loyal Bushies” – loyal not to the rule of law, but to Bush – without Senate confirmation.
If anything, in “Clones,” the donkeyish Jar Jar Binks is a caricature of Congressional Democrats. Palpatine moves to expand his own power (temporarily, of course, to fight the “separatists.”) He cons Jar Jar, now a Senator, into sponsoring his “Military Creation Act.” The Senate adopts it immediately, clearing the way for Palpatine to become omnipotent.
Palpatine’s secret clone army appears; they are the Stormtroopers who will plague Luke Skywalker and friends. They file into troop transports to familiar, ominous music: “The Imperial March.”
That’s not Lucas’ only warning about our response to 9/11.
Anakin, now a teenage Jedi apprentice, is tormented by dreams of his mother. He finds her, just in time to watch her die. She has been brutalized by burqa-wearing “Sand People.” Full of hatred, Anakin slaughters them, women and children included. Darth Vader’s theme music plays.
It’s just as Yoda warned back in 1999: “Fear is the path of the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
ELIMINATING THE OPPOSITION
By “Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” (2005), Palpatine has used flattery, misinformation, and fear to make Anakin a loyal Palpie. He installs him on the Jedi Council, the high chamber of law and order.
Now Anakin has nightmares about the death of his pregnant wife, Padmé. Palpatine tells him there is a chance to save her, but only through the dark side. Just as the Jedi are racing to remove the Sith Lord from power, Anakin betrays them. Terrified of losing his wife and unborn child, he abandons his own moral code. He becomes Darth Vader, and helps Palpatine execute his checkmate move – the destruction of the Jedi.
As he murders Jedi leader Mace Windu, who has come to his office to arrest him, Palpatine revels in “U-u-unlimited! Power-r-r!” With the Jedi out of the way, nothing can stop him.
It presages what’s happened at the Justice Department.
A year after “Sith”’s release, U.S. Attorney Carol Lam indicted GOP Congressman Duke Cunningham and CIA Executive Director Dusty Foggo. When she told the Justice Department she was investigating a wider plot, the White House forced her to resign, along with other prosecutors pursuing Republicans.
A similar purge took place at CIA immediately after Bush’s re-election. At the time, conservative pundits excoriated CIA operatives (and journalists, and filmmakers, and everyone else) who opposed Bush’s policies as traitors.
Palpatine vilifies the Jedi as traitors, too – they’re such a threat, he declares himself Emperor.
“In order to ensure our security and continuing stability,” he glibly tells the Senate, “the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society, which, I assure you, will last for ten thousand years.”
The senators cheer. “So this is how liberty dies,” Padmé muses. “With thunderous applause.”
The new Emperor dispatches Anakin to murder the “separatist” leaders. The war is over. The dictatorship is in place. And Anakin’s fall is imminent.
RED LIGHTSABER, BLUE LIGHTSABER
That controversial line? Here it is in context: Padmé flies to meet Anakin, but Obi Wan has stowed away aboard her ship. He confronts his pupil.
Obi-Wan: You have allowed this Dark Lord to twist your mind ... you have become the very thing you swore to destroy.
Anakin: Don't lecture me, Obi-Wan. I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear the dark side as you do. I have brought peace, justice, freedom, and security to my new Empire.
Obi-Wan: Your new Empire?
Anakin: Don't make me kill you.
Obi-Wan: Anakin, my allegiance is to the Republic. To democracy!
Anakin: If you're not with me, you're my enemy.
Obi-Wan: Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes.
Lucas isn’t bashing Bush. He’s describing a battle for America’s soul – a cataclysmic duel on the hellacious lava planet Mustafar, named for a village in Iraq.
Heartbroken, Obi Wan de-limbs Anakin and leaves him for dead, literally blistering with hatred as his skin catches fire. The Emperor rescues him and rebuilds him – new limbs, a suit of black armor to protect his scorched flesh, a breathing apparatus that yields his signature hhh-khhh ... and, finally, the mask.
In his anti-imperialist 1936 essay “Shooting an Elephant,” Orwell writes, “When the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys ... For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the ‘natives,’ and so in every crisis he has got to do what the ‘natives’ expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”
(Think Cheney, arguing that we must stay in Iraq, lest Osama bin Laden think we’re cowards.)
Because Anakin abandons his core moral principles, he not only fails to save his family, he destroys it. Blind with rage, he fatally injures Padmé. She dies giving birth. And Anakin is enslaved again, bowing to the Emperor and calling him “Master,” forever.
The next time we meet Vader, in the 1977 film – now called “Episode IV: A New Hope” – he is still fighting the insurgent rebels who oppose the totalitarian Empire. The Emperor has dissolved the Senate. Democracy is dead.
Vader is so lost, he tortures Princess Leia – his daughter – for information (she never submits). When he tortures Han Solo (in 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back”), he doesn’t even ask any questions. It’s torture for torture’s sake. Just like Abu Ghraib. He’s a monster.
He exists only to serve the Emperor.
Later, as they duel – red lightsaber versus blue lightsaber – Vader beseeches his farmboy son, Luke Skywalker, to join him in that service. In “Episode VI: Return of the Jedi,” the Emperor wants Luke to kill the ravaged Vader and take his place. Better still, says Vader, kill the Emperor and rule as father and son.
But Obi Wan has trained Luke for this moment. He won’t kill Vader. He won’t even kill the Emperor. That would mean surrender to the dark side. Instead, Luke allows the Emperor to nearly kill him – and Vader kills the Emperor, to save his son.
Because Luke refuses the dark side, Anakin is redeemed; the tyranny of the Empire is crushed; and freedom is restored. Luke removes his father’s mask.
THE DARK SIDE OF FORCE
Five days after the September 11 attacks, newsman Tim Russert asked Vice President Cheney what kind of tactics the U.S. would use in pursuing the perpetrators.
Cheney responded that America will “have to work ... sort of the dark side, if you will ... That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”
Cheney knew enough to make the reference, but sadly not enough to understand it.
We hated the men who hit us on September 11, and we lashed out with that hatred. We’ve sought to restore order by imposing our will on others, the antithesis of democracy. We voted in fear, and we got a Presidential Administration that sees itself as an all-powerful “unitary executive,” accountable to no one – a war time dictatorship, in a war so permanent, they say we may not even know it when it ends.
Six years into that endless war, Americans look in the mirror and find the iron mask staring back. We’ve become a pariah, seen no longer as a beacon of light, but as a threat to the very global stability we sought to ensure.
Lucas’ message is clear. Once you submit to the dark side, even just a little, the war is lost.
Though it seems the most expedient way to survive in frightening times, America pursues an imperial destiny at the peril of its own freedom. We’re already well down the road to totalitarianism. The groundwork has been lain.
Perhaps the 2006 election was our “New Hope,” with Nancy Pelosi – who represents Lucasfilm’s district – as Rebel Commander Mon Mothma. It remains to be seen whether Congress or a new president will restore democracy and repair America’s place in the world.
First, we must reject the dark side.
42 comments:
Excellent Post.
Not only a great post, it makes me want to watch the movies (I saw Episodes IV-VI when they were originally released).
It's difficult to draw these comparisons without overdoing it, but you make good points. Very nicely done. Sadly, Orwell and Lucas were not clairvoyant, these events have played out again and again, around the world, throughout history. America in Vietnam, the French in Algeria, the British in India, back to the Romans and the Gauls and beyond. The strong develop a fear of the weak, and anything can be justified in the name of self-defense.
Hello
Your analogy to Star Wars is brilliant but you seem to have neglected to note that Iraq is not an isolated act of gross imperialism by the USA and its puppet Blair.
You forget Yugoslavia and the brutal attack on the christian Serbs by the Bushis alto ego Bill Clinton.
78 days and nights of terror on a defenceless population - worthy of any Star Wars movie.
I quote you
'The parallel is clear. But Palpatine controls the “separatists.”
It is abundantly clear to any who will make just a small effort to research, that the USA created and then collaborated and used the islamic terrorist movement the KLA (in co-operation with Bin Laden himself) and provoked the Serbs into confrontation and destruction.
Worse the current administration, which as Norman Mailer says are merely Tweedledee and Tweedledum , plans to impose and indeed recognize a 'free and independent Kosovo'. This against international law and the UN charter which upholds the sovereign borders of its member states.
In other words to impose a state still run by the Empire's islamic terrorist friends, a heaven for international terrorists and criminals, drugs, people and weapons smuggling to say but a little, right in the soft 'underbelly of Europe'.
A fundamentalist breeding and training ground for islamic terrorists right amid the defenceless sheep of the states of western Europe.
Our imperialist EU masters believe they can contain it - ask the folk of Madrid and London how containable such terror is. Ask the Americans who have died trying to contain it in Iraq.
George Lucas couldn't have made this one up.
After suppressing its citizens rights and plunging Iraq into a bloodbath in the name of fighting islamic terror - the Empire plans an islamic Kosovo and increasingly an islamic Bosnia (where the Dayton accords are about to be ignored and Serbs forced to live under increasingly islamic wahhabi domination with mosques springing up like toadstools courtesy of the Saudis).
The American people and their Empire are either with islamic terror as in Kosovo, or against it.
But the fact they collude and fund such terror when it suits, as with the Taliban in Afghanistan, the KLA in Kosovo, the UCK in Macedonia and countless other less known examples, show they are heirs to Palpatine indeed.
When the American backed terrorists of Kosovo start their campaign of death and destruction across my continent, Europe, courtesy of the USA, perhaps the Empire will be sated of its bloodlust indeed.
I pray for a successful third party candidate in the next American Presidential auction, a Luke or Leia to bring down the evil Empire which in now the United States.
Sincerely
Rosie (England)
Thanks for your link from Checkpoint Baghdad. Please R Simon – the Star War analogy is so passe now. Please go and see Pirates 3. It is an indictment of America and Britain and a precious paean to Al Qaeda as the “Pirates” of today. Consider the first scene where London urchins and widows are sent to the gallows for who knows what while a town crier intones the suspension of habeus corpus and rights of assembly and speech to combat the present danger of piracy. Consider the coalition of the mostly unwilling Pirate Lords to destroy by any terror means available the overbearing East Indian Trading Company
Of course please do not mistake my post as sarcasm. I am sure you see things as I do that Bush is evil and that all forces arranged against him and America are acting out of good intentions though some may be misguided. Since it is quite clear that Halliburton, the NEW East Indian Trading Company, somehow owns the UN Security Council and controls the World Bank still, even though Wolfie is gone, we MUST take desperate action. Perhaps push Israel to the sea from North and East - yes that's the ticket - that will disrupt all our plans for "good business"
Thanks for stopping by, friends.
Cervantes, it's really worth watching all six films starting with Episiode I. It changes how you see Vader.
Anon 2, you're right. Both Lucas and Orwell are able to presage the future because they understand history well. Empire and Democracy are incompatible.
Rosie, I'm not sure I know much about Kossovo having become a terrorist state. I fear you're equating Islam with terrorism -- it's an argument I don't buy. The Serbs were engaging in genocide. In that case, in my opinion, the US and NATO were correct to intervene.
Imperialism is typically when one nation takes over another in order to exploit its natural resources to fuel further imperial expansion. What's the resource in Kossovo?
Robert b., I have not seen the Pirates films, but I did get the sense from a review that there was a political statement therein.
Your smug dismissal of opinions that differ from yours, I've seen before. If you dismiss me as a "Bush-hater", then you don't have to consider the veracity of my argument. You have written me off as inherently illogical. It's a logical fallacy, really -- a straw man.
There's nothing in my post that asserts that "Bush is evil" or that anyone acting against the US is good.
This was a discussion of the dangers that Imperialistic adventures pose to a democracy.
But it's much easier to attack than to think, isn't it?
No, sir, you’re the one that attacks without thinking.
Because of our horrible “empire”, nobody likes us. Boo-hoo. That apparently does NOT include Lebanon, free Iraq, India, Japan, Israel, Britain, Australia, Germany and now France, among many other countries. Canada has its doubts but fights and dies alongside us in Afghanistan. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey need strengthening of liberties and that will NOT come from our weakness to terrorists and totalitarians. Russia, along with full support of the apocalyptic, Holocaust denying Mahmoud or Iran is yet on the move to reclaim Ukraine, Estonia, and from thence, Eastern Europe again!! China is on the wrong side in Sudan (Darfur!!) and most of Africa, the most daring venture capitalist for oil and trade by sowing totalitarianism of every stripe. So I feel sorry for the hundreds in Guantanamo getting 3 square meals a day but with habeus corpus restricted BUT they are the terrorist enemy and they are the lucky ones if we continue the struggle.
Please check my website where my latest post makes the remarkable argument that the Democratic Congress are MORE imperialistic than Neo-cons.
http://rb2bb.blogspot.com/
This is striking and insightful, and kind of like the six (six?) movie series (which is makes me respect again, for having more than wodden acting and bad costumes for the last three). You draw readers into both the analogy and some facts I had not known, such as the (not a surprise, but oh my God) position paper calling for a New Pearl Harbor. Where is any ethical leadership or movement to take back our country? (I know a few places, but, I would really like the Jedi here too). J
Rich: This is full of disturbing, important information and research--thanks. It definitely makes the last three woodenly acted movies make more sense and matter to me--I want to see them again. An ything that insults the, Emperor, is probably doing something right.
I was especially surprised about the 2000 position paper calling for a New Pearl Harbor--God. Some things that are deeply disturbing get hidden or erased right now, when we need the facts and some really strong leadership--fast. Where are our Jedis, I wonder?
(Love how in depth this is--)
Jan
Thanks, Poetmom. You should see the 4000-word draft ... I hope Sr. Aaron sees it. Very postcolonial.
RobertB, it's very interesting to see a former clerk to a Supreme Court Chief Justice brush off "restricted" Habeas Corpus as hardly consequential.
Surely you can see some merit in not undermining the Constitution in the pursuit of security.
Please Poetmom and others, do a find on "Pearl Harbor" in Richard's link to "Rebuilding America's Defenses". You'll find 2 references in the PDF - one on transforming and updating technology. That would be budgeting for new weapons systems needed not deployment to invade a nation, this report does not seem to cover the geopolitical aspects. The second Pearl Harbor specifically references the Navy being prevented from its mission of projection of force and "showing the flag" by innovative enemies. It doesn't say specifically but that could be referring to the USS Cole attacked by Al Qaeda which had already occurred. THE bottom line with you guys is 9/11 - for the Neo-Cons to be the Evil Empire you MUST believe that these American citizens made this "Pearl Harbor" happen or let it happen which amounts to the same thing. Either that is TRUE, in which I WOULD AGREE that all policy derived from that is EVIL or it is NOT, in which case, we are beset as I say elsewhere by terrorists and tyrants and must take resolute action.
In fact, Robertb, what the New American Century folks are talking about is transforming the US Military's posture for a unipolar, post Cold War reality.
There are good reasons to do such a thing -- chiefly to guard against a rising China.
But, in context, what the document says, is "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."
Within a year, these folks were in the White House, and their Pearl Harbor had occurred.
I think many Americans believe that FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to happen to get the nation to rally into WWII.
Do you think it is beyond reason to consider that Cheney, et al, felt so strongly about the need for the US to reposition its military (to deal with both non-state and rival national threats) that they would have allowed a "catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor" to happen?
If you read the rest of page 51, you will see that every next step has already been taken. We are following "Rebuilding America's Defenses" to the letter.
And all the guys who dreamed this plan up have been in charge of our foreign policy for the last six years.
The choice is not between taking resolute action against threats and not taking resolute action against threats.
The question is whether we sacrifice our nation's core principles in pursuit of guarding against those threats.
In which case, no need to bother.
The United States is a nation of ideas, not of bloodlines. As such, it can not be destroyed from without. It can only be destroyed from within, by an abandonment of those ideas that make it what it is.
Ask John Roberts what he thinks.
If what you say is the case, then both FDR and Bush betrayed us, and all history since 1941 has been a fraud. Hey maybe Cheney's grandpa put the contract out on the Archduke Ferdinand. Sorry, not buying it!
By the way, FDR could be assured that he and all his family would survive whatever he "let happen", either Bush Cheney knew all the details and could trust them or they could have been killed themselves by some change in timing or target (i.e. instead of the Pentagon, the White House, George Sr and Barbara having lunch at Windows on the World, etc). Geez, did Rummy know too, he would have to, did he know which side of the Pentagon to be on that was safe?? Nonsense!!!
Hello Richard
Thank you for your reply but what a shame that you are still believing the old canards. The mass graves of Kosovo were no more real than the WMD in Iraq.
You write
'Rosie, I'm not sure I know much about Kossovo having become a terrorist state. I fear you're equating Islam with terrorism -- it's an argument I don't buy. The Serbs were engaging in genocide. In that case, in my opinion, the US and NATO were correct to intervene. '
Richard do just a little research and you will find that your black is very white and that you are supporting the wrong side because you have been sadly brainwashed into doing so, not least by some of the most biassed political reporting since WW2.
I guess you know that the serbs died in their hundred thousand fighting for the allies in that war. Both Croatia and Albania were fighting with the Nazis and the terror they inflicted on the Serbs and their allies is legendary in its sheer brutality.
I am happy to e mail you some excellent references from extremely knowledgable and independent people. i can direct you to excellent websites.
The facts are overwhelming.
Did you know that the proposed new PM of Kosovo - supported by the USA - in an indicted War criminal? Did you know that the present Kosovo is run by the old islamic terrorist para militaries the KLA, which was founded by Osama Bin laden and the CIA - when of course he was - if not still - a CIA operative?.
Did you know that Kosovo is regarded by intelligence services and europol and interpol as a hotbed of islamic terror with training camps, drug smuggling, people smuggling and every sort of money laundering and money fraud on an international level. For instance Albanians' Kosovars now control 60% of prostitution just in London alone and have a terror and criminal network spanning the globe.
With respect Richard - you seem to be ready to believe the dark side very readily - you should know how plausible they are. Get into the light, look for the truth - to paraphrase another famous sci fi saying - 'the truth is out there'
Very sincerely Rosie
You see what happens once you go down the road ...
The truth is ...that there are allies of convenience and sometimes as Governor Swann said to Norrington in Pirates 1 "Perhaps on the rare occasion pursuing the right course demands an act of piracy, piracy itself can be the right course?" meaning of course we supported a great number of people doing a great number of things against the Communist colossus.
What that has to do with the essential elements of the national interest which include global stability, free trade, freedom of information, association, religion, I don't think you can piece together. Get back to reality.
Speaking of the Soviets, it turns out that's where we've gotten our interrogation tactics. And, as any Hollywood movie from the 1950s will tell you, Soviet interrogation tactics don't work ( see http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/washington/30interrogate.html ).
The lesson of our age appears to be that a dance with the devil is a dance with the devil. You arm the mujahedin, you arm bin Laden, you deny the Soviets their warm water port, you win the Cold War. And then bin Laden comes after you as the next enemy, and guess what? The Soviet totalitarianism rises again in new form, and this time it's got the oil wealth -- just as if you'd never armed the mujahedin in the first place.
You overthrow the Iranian leader to keep the Soviets out, install the pro-American Shah, you get Khomenei. You arm Saddam against Khomenei, pit them against each other to keep the Soviets out of the region, you get Saddam in Kuwait. You take out Saddam, you get Ahmedinejad.
I don't disagree with one major element of Bush's foreign policy (too bad his own team doesn't believe in it). For sixty years, US foreign policy has been "he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." It doesn't work long-term. That's the real lesson of 9/11.
Every time "realism" dictates a dance with the devil, we lose.
You get rid of the Kaiser, you get Hitler. You get rid of the Ottoman Empire and create a homeland for the Jews, you bring on a century long jihad. You support the oldest SOB of them all, Czar of Russia you get Lenin
To get rid of Hitler, you support Stalin and you get Communist Eastern Europe. You get rid of Tojo, you get Mao.
I'm sorry but the above is not a recipe for inaction, and neither is your LIST!
It's a history of the ongoing road of the way the world is (power hungry dictators intimidating the world and especially the vulnerable) but also the never quenched desire of men to be FREE.
We're not exactly disagreeing, Robertb.
You get rid of Hitler and Tojo and treat the Germans and the Japanese better than they treated everyone else, and you get thriving democracies that are anchors of stability in the region.
You replace Abu Ghraib with Abu Ghraib and you get more disaster.
You try to keep armies in Iraq forever to maintain access to the oil and you get an insurgency.
You try to tamp down the nationalist insurgency in a country you've invaded and occupied and you become a tyranny.
As Orwell tells us, "when the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys."
That's the problem. Imperialism leads to tyranny leads to totalitarianism at home.
Which doesn't really do much for advancing freedom.
The answer is not inaction, but smart action. What do you propose for Darfur?
(Note: I tried to temporarily delete or edit a comment, above, by RobertB, which had a long link that was throwing off the page's alignment. I thought I could restore it -- alas, no. Not an attempt at censorship! Sorry, folks.)
Found it ... this comment from yesterday, 12:53pm
Robert B said...
On Guantanamo
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/05/16/ terror_suspect_alleges_guantanamo_torture/3598/
WASHINGTON, May 16 (UPI) -- One of 14 "high value" terror suspects at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, claims he twice tried to commit suicide.
A transcript of testimony given by Majid Khan, 27, before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal on April 15 seen by The Washington Post says Khan claims he was "mentally tortured" to the point of trying to chew through his own arteries on two occasions.
He also alleged he lost 30 pounds in a 27-day hunger strike and that he and other prisoners were subjected to a loud fan that "drives us all crazy."
Among his other complaints were being given cheap unscented soap, athletic equipment was in bad repair and the camp's weekly newsletter was of poor quality, the Post reported.
Khan was detained in March 2003 while staying with a brother in Pakistan. U.S. officials allege the Pakistani national who graduated from high school outside Baltimore in 1999 took orders from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who is accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
A Pentagon spokesman on Tuesday told the Post that Khan had been "treated humanely."
We've been coddling them. But now we're prosecuting these animals like Khalid Sheikh, the planner, and some of his heartless killers under the legislation approved last year "The Military Commission Act of 2006" - you know, that to-do between Bush and McCain that they worked out. So their corpus re-habeused, they will not be men without a country, though they may be bodies without a head at some point.
12:53 PM (May 29)
Sorry if I re-aligned your page, wow something profoundly ironic there, perhaps? Darfur - regime change - imposed national reconciliation conference by the United Nations. African Union forces should have a new division patterned perhaps on Interpol to ferret out the arms supply and interrelationship of the various African terrorist groups (especially the Ugandan LRA and the African franchises of Al Qaeda). These points clearly SHOULD be multilaterally coordinated. However only AMERICA can stand up to the real growing power behind the scenes, CHINA but such measures need to be as diverse economically and politically as their, and just about (sometimes piracy is justified, says Governor Swann) as devious, so we won't know ALL that should happen to counter threats.
Replace Abu Gharib with Abu Gharib... Yeah, but Guantanamo is not the Gulag or the Shoah in any way. And if you're threatened by having your library record checked or why NSA might be curious you're calling Khartoum, then you don't know what Google and Amazon already know about you. And WE DID replace Stalags with Nuremberg, and Tamarkan prison camp (Bridge on the River Kwai) and Bataan Death March with Manzanar internment and Australia's Cowra POW camp.
Guantanamo is not Shoah, but with perhaps 1 million civilians dead in Iraq, we are looking at a major humanitarian catastrophe. So much for an America-friendly new Iraq.
Guantanamo is gulag. The men there are presumed guilty, and held outside the realm of law. What's worse, they are treated outside the realm of international treaties to which we are signatory. They are interrogated with tactics that rightfully belong to history's worst actors, and now also to us. And those tactics were exported to Iraq, where they were used against more innocent men, who were eventually released because they were innocent, and joined the insurgency because they were indignant.
The first problem is the presumption of guilt -- which is an abandonment of a fundamental principle.
The second is the use of torture, another betrayal of a core principle, as understandable as it may have been.
We are now trapped by such. Our abandonment of our own values has united our enemies, manufactured more terrorists, dug the hole in Iraq deeper and deeper, pushed the goals further and further out of reach.
In other words, it's not working.
You now have a Vice President of the United States of America essentially mocking the Geneva conventions in a formal speech to a graduating class of young officers.
If I would have told you that in 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, or 2000, you would not have believed it.
We have fallen far.
Good God, now you have it as a million civilians dead. What poppycock! The UN and the Iraq Body Count say otherwise - 1/20th that!! Just an agenda driven publisher thinks they can bulldoze us because it's a medical journal and its statistics.
I thought you wanted to accuse the neocons of such agenda driven massaging of intelligence on WMD, I think the "loyal opposition" loses the high ground on this and I said before the "bottom line" issue - 9/11. I think I've proven that there can be NO "let it happen", you didn't answer. Therefore you're barking mad and all of you guys live off of frustration at Bush when it is Al Queda, yes, and Mahmoud that will KILL you or cause World War IV (You know we won the first 3). Torturing terrorists is not a Gulag, Pol Pot would laugh himself silly at our moral niceties. Anyway its over, like I said, the 2006 Military Commissions act, everybody's corpus can be re-habeus, no "man without a country". Why don't you see a real movie about morals in war, like Guns of Navarone, where Gregory Peck and David Niven argue morality of point-blank assasination, executing a woman betrayer, and leaving a man behind to be tortured (with false information) as well as leaving the Greek villagers behind to face the music after the guns are blown.
That's war, baby.
We were almost having a conversation there for a minute.
My "perhaps one million" figure was from the News Hour's coverage two nights ago.
I find it very interesting that you want us to use history's villains as our moral compass.
Pol Pot laughing at us? Let him laugh!
Osama laughing at us? That's our reason to act?
See Orwell, George, Shooting an Elephant. Seriously. Read it. http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/887/
You're missing the point, which is beyond George Bush versus liberals.
The reason we won the first three world wars is that we retained the moral high ground. For the most part (as you point out).
What Orwell tells us is that Imperialism is a trap that takes away your freedom by causing you to abandon your better judgement.
What Lucas tells us, as I've written above, is that when you surrender your basic moral code in the pursuit of order and stability, you lose your freedom.
This isn't to beat up George Bush. It's to say that the thicket we're in has been been in before.
Others have lit the path to warn us. And we're not listening because everything devolves into an argument about George Bush.
Get over it and open your eyes.
The invasion of Iraq was preordained -- before 9/11.
Look at the names on this letter imploring Clinton, in 1998, to enact regime change in Iraq:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
Jeffrey Bergner
John Bolton
Paula Dobriansky
Francis Fukuyama
Robert Kagan
Zalmay Khalilzad
William Kristol
Richard Perle
Peter W. Rodman
Donald Rumsfeld
William Schneider, Jr.
Vin Weber
Paul Wolfowitz
R. James Woolsey
Robert B. Zoellick
I'm not questioning their motives. I'm pointing out that this course was set long before 9/11.
And, again, that history has warned us.
I don't believe FDR let Pearl happen, but he certainly lied to the American people in 1940 election that our boys would not be in the fight, and thank God he did. FDR made sure and Truman executed the first use of nuclear weapons in war - on mostly civilian populace. You think Brits and Americans did not torture Nazis, have not tortured KGB and VC? You go right ahead with your purity. And yes there's a place for it. McCain deeply felt that there must be limits, so there are. Bush saw it as laws protecting his guys prosecuting the war on terror, so now there are and the Supreme Court affirmed. So what's your problem now? Gandhi wanted Haile Selassie not to put up a fight, Italians would get bored with his desert and later advised Jews to put on campaign like his against the Nazis. HE WAS WRONG
I'm not advocating pacifism.
It's one thing to interrogate an enemy agent; it's quite another thing entirely to erase the lines between agents and the general populace, and then begin to torture members of the general populace on mere suspicion.
To extend your analogies, you'd have to consider that the Iraqis are the Indians and the Ethiopians. And we are the British and the Italians -- the occupying colonial power.
What you appear to be saying is that the Iraqis are right to fight us hook and claw to get us out of their country.
Did you realize the plan is and has always been to establish permanent bases there?
The Iraqis don't want our permanent bases. So how is that bringing them Democracy and freedom?
Who is erasing lines between populace and agents? Which one is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?
Which one is the shoe bomber?
Which one are the JFK plotters who seem to be from Canada, Trinidad, and all points?
At some point, if Iraq doesn't want bases, there won't be bases. Were there "permanent" bases in the Phillipines? - there USED TO BE. Was there a permanent canal zone - there used to be. Was there a base in Okinawa - there still is, though reduced even though locals have been upset by it because the Japanese Govt has not moved to change that. And that is where Rep. Murtha wants to redeploy to defend CENTRAL Asia. We have NATO bases in Turkey, but Turkey has restrictions on how we can use them. We are not colonialists. We can rent space elsewhere - Tajikistan, Afghanistan, India perhaps, Lebanon - anywhere we have allies not scaredycats
Either the Weekly Standard is weirdly prescient or dominated by some fairly dodgy people (I maintain both), but a few years ago, they wrote an article praising the virtues of the Empire, such as strong and efficient central government and the dispensation of bureaucracy when it comes to "defending the homeland." It also says the Rebel Alliance are rabble rousers without an exit strategy for implementing a lasting democratic government (Irony, but i digress) who are only selfish brats looking to protect their self interests. The author also makes sure to defend the lasting benefits of imperialistic foreign policy, such as the "relatively benign" Pinochet regime. Incidentally, it was this article that made me decide that my former party had "jumped the shark" ideologically.
Once again, empire is defined not by deployment of troops or hamburgers sold. It is 1) the creation of dependency thru tribute to the center and "bread and circuses" to the periphery. And 2) the selection of satraps and viceroys - they govern at the king's pleasure. This is NOT the neo-con expansion of liberty, It is rather the Democratic liberal dream whether one-worlders or American globalists. See my blog, http://rb2bb.blogspot.com/2007/05/why-democrats-are-more-imperialistic.html to see how
If you can read more than a paragraph, you should re-visit the Weekly Standard to read "http://www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/013/716ftvjq.asp" that annotates the Iraq Study Group which tends towards impositions on our allies, new PR platforms for our enemies and the stench of anti-Semitism and "old hands" of diplomacy reaching for Sunni satraps.
Scooter, the Weekly Standard is run by William Kristol, who is one of the neoconservative architects of the Iraq War, and the founder of the Project for a New American Century think tank, who continues to pose as some kind of journalist.
It is his (and his colleagues' and cohorts') plan we are following. They are in charge of our foreign policy. They admire the fascistic Empire of Star Wars? Of course they do. That's why they'll vilify Lucas rather than heed his warnings. It is they about whom we are being warned.
Robert B., General Miller exported torture tactics from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, where they were used on the civilian populace, in an effort to obtain information about the insurgency through "coercion."
You point out some salient aspects of some Empires. We promised the Iraqis a lot of things; the problem is that the buffoons in charge tried too many experiments at once. Hard to do bread and circuses in the middle of a Civil War.
Want a viceroy? How about Bremer?
Dependence on the center? It's pretty clear the Iraqi government is 100% dependent on our continued military presence. That's the Bush Administration's argument!
Tribute to the center will follow in the form of continued access to Iraqi oil -- which is the whole point.
The central characteristic of Imperialism is the invasion of a less powerful nation or territory by a more powerful one, with the primary goal of exploiting natural resources -- which fuels further colonial expansion.
You don't actually read what's put before you, do you? Oil will be sold to ALL and OPEC is the empire that will set the price. Distribution of revenues to the populace which is only done here, in Alaska, is planned by the Iraqi govt for all of Iraq. So what exactly do we control, yeah maybe maintaining equipment and drilling. Our oil companies have done better than that in Hugo's Venezuela.
News bulletin - Occupation officially ended in 2004 with the end of Bremer's term. The CPA gave authority over to the UNITED NATIONS!! to oversee elections, which were held and a Parliamentary Government exists. Military rule does exist however. 7 provinces of the 17 though are even primarily under Iraqi control in this critical regard.
Iraq is about to declare war on Turkey and can decide on whether we are permanently based. Does that sound like permanent empire or graduated self-government? All we need to do is kill the Al Qaeda and toss out Moqtada Al Sadr back to Tehran.
Paul Roberts argues that the PNAC plan is to pry Iraq off of OPEC, thereby denying the Saudis the sole ability to "capacity cleanse" and therefore control price ... the main obstacle between the US and global hegemony.
I'm not arguing we invaded Iraq to take the oil. That's an oversimplification. But we absolutely did invade Iraq to open up the flow of oil to American consumers, via American oil companies.
It's not quite the same old imperialism -- sort of a blend between colonialism and neo-colonialism. An old-style imperialist military invasion followed by a neo-colonialist nourishing of a U.S. friendly government. Which was the plan, as stated. To transform the Middle East by transplanting Democracy in Iraq. No?
By the way, today Colin Powell called for Guantanamo to be closed -- this afternoon.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/06/10/AR20
07061000451.html?hpid=topnews
Princess Leia has passed away!!
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/06/18/cuba.espin.ap/index.html
"Her name will be linked eternally to the most significant achievements of Cuban women through the Revolution," the government said, calling Espin "one of the most relevant fighters for women's emancipation in our country and in the world."
Born into a wealthy family in eastern Cuba, Espin became a young urban rebel after Fulgencio Batista took power in a coup, and she battled his dictatorship throughout the 1950s.
A ...woman with ...auburn hair twisted into a bun, Espin was a highly recognized figure across the island. She was regularly seen at gatherings of the National Assembly and other important government meetings.
Espin and Raul Castro were married in April 1959, four months after Batista fled the island and rebels marched triumphantly into Santiago, and later Havana. Pictures in Life magazine showed the bride in an elegant white gown and pearls in her hair. The groom was clad in his olive green military uniform, pistol at his side.
If you are in any way typical of the personnel taking up space in the faculty lounges of our institutions of higher learning -- may God help us.
Richard,
That's a beautiful analysis of Lucas' work. Thanks for doing it!
In reading the comments here, I'm struck by the role of information. Without a study of the neocons, one simply cannot understand what "highjacked foreign policy," might mean. It's a meme with no reference, until one researches the neocons' affiliations, say through RightWeb.
That all of us have surrendered the first liberty - let alone the entire Bill of Rights - so that other people, in another land, can imagine they're safer, or so they can steal Kurd oil and pipe it through Syria, is... well... what is that?
For those who believe in the Arab boogeyman, I recommend "Whose War?" by Pat Buchanan. And "A Clean Break" is absolutely essential reading; exploring the entire website is quite enlightening.
There is much to say about human behaviour and the way the world is - the one in which we are of, but not always should we succumb to be enmeshed, to be "in".
Star Wars, George Lucas, Orwell and the conspiracies that they speak of flourish and have for time ad infinitum.
The war in Viet Nam, the war on terror, the wars of our times and ever before are quite simply put, expressions of humanity, and not very pleasant ones at that. We live in dark times. But this is not new news.
There are what some may label "luciferian" forces which abound in our perceived realities, and whether we choose to analyze them and by doing so, possibly empower said dark forces, or empower ourselves by seeing through the shape shifting and multi-levelled manipulations, this is ours to choose.
If conspiracies survive it is because we let them with our permission to enter into symbiotic feeding of what they seek most; fear. And we feed off our own fear.
Is this how we wish to live?
I'm not sure I understand your point.
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