>An interesting discussion, but beside my point, which
>was that Americans won't normally support imperialist
>crusades in merely moral disguises. That is why the
>Iraq and Afghan wars had to be sold as revenge and
>self-defense.
On my fundraiser radio show on Thursday, I'm running an interview I recorded Monday with Noam Chomsky. Chomsky has a surprising view on the Iraq elections (they occurred against the will of the US, and were a victory for the nonviolent resistance - though it's doubtful whether the US will accede to the results). He also makes the argument that the intensity of Bush's campaign of lies about Iraq is evidence of how far you have to go to sell an imperial war to the US public. (As an aside, he said if the things Bush said about WMDs and Saddam's ties to 9/11 were true, he'd have supported the war too.) As he's done before, he contrasted the Iraq war to Vietnam, when it took five years for an antiwar movement to develop. And he cited a poll showing that, retrospectively, some 70% of the US public thought the Vietnam war was "fundamentally wrong, and not a mistake."
Doug