Perpetual war

The war in Iraq has nothing to do with Saddam Hussein and the war on terrorism has little to do with terrorists. There have been dozens of individuals as murderous and unstable as Saddam was in every century of human history. The idea that a few barely organized lunatics are more dangerous than an army that possesses thousands of nuclear warheads is ridiculous. Things should be kept in perspective and skills should not be superhumanly exaggerated.

Both wars have everything to do with national politics. With those never-ending conflicts, both parties do not need to actually work when they are in power. They can both maintain vague policies about security-related probabilities and not be held accountable for actual policy-making. With a constant culture war, dividing the population on emotional issues, policy-making can be easily deflected with rhetorical speech.

As long as we're here, small parentheses should be opened about emboldening and giving aid and comfort to the enemy: it's ridiculous. Any adult who thinks that some actual terrorist out there in, say Yemen, Pakistan or Iraq, is listening to what some people are writing or saying in editorials or speeches is either drunk or delusional. Add to that the fact that all the emboldening and comfort for exercising the fundamental act of criticism and peer-review in political decision-making is not going to do much difference in front of a guided missile or hand weapon, and much of this debate adds up to a content level between kindergarten and 3rd grade.

Since the information media has neither mandate nor incentive to provide understanding of political affairs, it is simple matter to provide incentives to the opposite and maintain sufficient secrecy to minimize accountability. With power should come proportional accountability, which is simply not possible with secrecy. Between secrecy, and its hypothetical efficiency boost, and accountability, which when correctly applied prevents corruption, incompetence, nepotism, war and propaganda, the benefit of the doubt is a foolish gift to grant to politicians.

Harpers published an excellent essay on American right-wing policies and their abuse of executive privilege, at a cost of several trillion and millions of lives: Stabbed in the Back! - The past and future of a right-wing myth, posted on July 14, 2006.