``...the 'shared sacrifice' issue. He had trouble dealing with that one too, a hard start for a program on which he was trying to push his call for war. Really every member of the adminstration should be called on this war on terror hype in the end...'' Stephen Philion
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Another way to press them, is finding a quote in Machiavelli or Hobbes or some other classic political text that says in effect that the Princes need an external threat to bring the public into order and control. If such threats and enemies don't exist, they need to be manufactured.
I can't find the particular quote I have in mind at the moment (its morning before going to work) but it is in some classic political text somewhere. Maybe somebody else can supply it.
In any event that is what is going on here. Such tangible threats could have been minimized with minor international cooperation and international police actions after 9/11.
But now after two years of random and unilateral killings, gross military intimidation, total support of Israel, and the war on Iraq, they can be credibly assumed to exist. So ultimately, the war on Iraq was about creating the conditions of endless war on ground, then using the reactions to these created events as the pretext for installing a long list of righwing national security measures, including the domestic police state Patriot Act.
Since we are at war, anything is justified as in the best interest of national security.
Chuck Grimes