Bush's War

Dave Black just watched the Frontline special Bush's War and shares his thoughts:

As the documentary shows, Bush's "war on terror" is simply a bed of Procrustes. The truth must be stretched or surgically abbreviated to fit it. I see no hope at all for a reversal of existing trends and a deliberate return to a more decentralized form of society, since any genuine diminution of the criminal lunacy can be accomplished only by teaching people to realize that our national policies are disastrous and entirely contrary-to-the-facts.

The neoconservative doctrine of perpetual war is manifestly unconstitutional and counter-productive, but those who believe in it get an enormous amount of heart-warming excitement from their belief, which makes them forget the long-range disasters which such beliefs inevitably lead to. Everyone says he is against war, but no one does anything to stop it. Our entire educational system is designed to support statism and is calculated to turn individuals into militarists (Bertrand Russell has a fine discussion in his Which Way to Peace?).

The "military-defense-of-democracy" argument is practically unassailable today, and it is not by proclaiming this fact in a loud voice that will convince human beings to discontinue their habit of aggressive warfare. It's really a great shame, considering the potential America has for setting an example for the world. So long as the majority of Americans choose to live like the homme moyen sensuel, society cannot do anything except to stagger from catastrophe to catastrophe.

You can view the two-part documentary in its entirety at PBS.org.