Hear! Hear!
Com. Johanning's point is incisive. Ever since Sept. 11 I have had the creepiest feeling: I finally understand what it is like on the inside of a state like Nazi Germany or Saddam's Iraq. One finds a combination of fear and reactive pride, the feeling of being encircled, a widening gap between one's national perception and the perception of one's allies, and a greater and greater reliance on ideas about who is good and who is evil. The logic of the war state is so seductive to so many people and just so easy to slip into. It's a scary business.
I can't help feeling that it taps into some deep part of human sociology. As social animals, we assess how much we are threatened primarily from observing the rest of our group, rather than making an individual judgment. It's weird because we on the left have always been the ones to say "Hey, there's something to be afraid of that you're not paying attention to," and now we're the ones who are saying "Hey, the threat you perceive doesn't justify all this."
peace,
boddi