Readers in Council,
The Japan Times,
5-4 Shibaura 4-chome,
Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023
So, the United States government invaded Iraqto facilitate "regime change" while it continues its unctuous claim of a benevolent aim to "liberate" the Iraqi people. An unprovoked invasion of liberation? It sounds like liberating the Iraqis to death. Since September 11, 2001 U.S. President George W. Bush has used the expression "You're either with us, or against us" (or, some variation thereof) on many occasions to squeeze cooperation from foreign governments and from his own citizens alike for the variety of civil rights-impinging security measures - and now military action - legislated and pursued in the name of national security.
More importantly, he used the egregious expression to try to force cooperation in the creation of a United Nations Security Council consensus for the purpose of forging of an anti-Iraq military coalition, plus international legal legitimacy to go with it, like what the first President Bush, George H. Bush, did in 1990-91. It seems that President George H. Bush was premature to declare a "new world order" more than a decade ago, and now his son is purposely trying to facilitate it.
U.S. ideologues would consider American interests to be synonymous with world interests, thus stripping all anti-American sentiment of credibility in their worldview. So, in this dawning new world order of imperial democracy, global American-style capitalism and pre-emptive military action for the purpose of American interests the "liberty" and "freedom" that the current neo-conservative ideologues in Washington seem devoted to looks more than anything else like the freedom to do what Washington tells us to do, and the liberty to think, say, read, write, publish and behave in a manner approved of by Pentagon and White House spokespeople and advisors.
People like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld do not and simply cannot (are unable to) see it this way because they see themselves as naturally and self-evidently benevolent, not to mention being in the right to begin with: the most evolved and therefore the best political-economic-social polity in human history. Not a polity without faults, but a polity nevertheless brimming with unique virtue.
Of course, it is balderdash, and every day is one day closer to the day when President George W. Bush will be out of office and the
reprehensible, criminal clique that surrounds him will be out of office and off my TV screen. I look forward to that future more than I look forward to the new world order that will be ensconced by then.