What’s really going on here?!? I feel like the child in the story of the Emperor’s New Cloths who knows something stinks while everyone else in the story panders and praises the wonderful cloths worn by the emperor who was really naked for all to see. Deep down most people know the 9/11 terrorist event was just too convenient for this administration and it’s Iran-Contra war-party hawks. Not only is this illegitimate Supreme Court appointed dictatorship made legitimate by 9/11, but the hawks were able to ‘send us all a message’, saying, "If you don’t want another 9/11, you better let us have our wars." Now we are about to start a war against a pre-defeated regime in Iraq with the arrogant presumption that it is our responsibility to change the regime. There was once a time when America abhorred the idea of attacking another country out of the blue because we felt the leader had to die. On top of this is the evidence under my nose that we have set Iraq up for this from the beginning. It’s no secret that America these days only attacks defenseless countries, which have been pummeled mercilessly with the latest in bomb technology. That has been the landscape in Iraq since the end of a war 12 years ago where controversial No-fly zones have been maintained by America and Briton. The hypocrisy of our self-righteous need to wage war with Iraq is underscored by the only female US Ambassador to a Muslim country telling Soddam Hussein that America wouldn’t mind it if he invaded Kuwait in response to Kuwait’s aggression of slant drilling Iraq’s oil. Let’s also not forget that those gas attacks used to kill Kurds, (which we mention constantly to justify our cause,) were at the time defended by non other than Donald Rumsfield before the UN in the first Bush administration. In fact the same old Iraq war players are conspicuously now our new Iraq war players; Cheney, Rumsfield, and Wolfowitz to name only three. What’s happening here? The Bush Presidency can now be credited with a Fatherland Security Agency to rival the USSR’s old KGB, a USA Patriot Act to replace our ‘irrelevant’ constitution, pre-emptive strike policies worthy of Hitler’s envy, a secret government, assassinations and regime change as accepted foreign policy, and an undeclared war pitting intimidation against terrorism. What next, concentration camps for poor people and potheads? This is not the America I was raised to believe in however, it is exactly what us conspiracy advocates have been warning of for decades.

America has embraced the irresistible temptation to become an Empire like ancient Rome. Right wing extremists are obviously at the bottom of this, as they use words like "benevolent global hegemony" to candy coat the word Empire, which might still not sit well with traditional Americans. The problem, as I see it, is that we are having trouble calling a spade a spade. We dance around the truth with pandering and Bush butt kissing, as if we were afraid of what that truth really is. These same Iraq war players have been making plans for the 21^st Century since the end of the last Iraq war. One of the papers produced since the first Gulf war, which completely outlines their plans is "Rebuilding America’s Defenses" by the Project for the New American Century. This document IS the Bush administration’s defense policy implemented with impunity since 9/11. The document reads like a 21^st Century Mien Kampf as it constantly asserts that America, (the indisputably mightiest nation on Earth,) is allowing itself to become weak militarily and needs to be re-built, re-positioned, re-financed, and made the dominant force in the 21^st Century. Time to call a spade a spade. The military, is seizing this moment in history to re-position our forces in Asia and the Middle East, increase military spending, and implement, "Rebuilding America’s Defenses" to the letter. That is the real reason for this saber rattling about Iraq who is specifically mentioned in the document for this very purpose. There is no talk of an exit strategy because there isn’t going to be one. America is on the brink of a decision that will totally redefine the Middle East in terms of America’s interests, as well as redefining America. They have set it up perfect to the point where not even I can disagree that Hussein is a tyrant and menace who deserves to be overthrown, but that doesn’t make it America’s business. All the while, 12 years of indifferent bombing, has resulted in the deaths of millions and eroded the very soul of our once noble country. No foreign power has killed millions of our citizens with arrogant impunity in or out of war. We can’t pretend to know what that is like. The problem with America conquering the world is that America must be concurred along with the rest of the world. That explains the USAPatriot act and other increases in police state power to make us more secure while making us all feel less secure at the same time. There are played-down flaws in this plan that grossly under-estimate the reaction from that elusive rest of the world getting bolder with opposition to America everyday. We need to seriously ask ourselves at this time if the responsibilities of Empire are what Americans really want. Empires become hard to maintain and history makes clear that they are inclined to bite off more than they can chew, grow bigger than their britches and ultimately degenerate into chaos. America may be able to handle it or we may find ourselves falling into the exact same trap which brought down the empire of the Soviet Union. The Russian war in Afghanistan was instrumental in ruining the Russian economy and demoralizing their populations leading ultimately to failure. Now America has propped up an ex-oil industry president/dictator in Afghanistan holding power by a thread. Even if everything goes according to Bush’s extravagant war plans we are still going to break the US economy and they don’t really seem to mind. Although the downfall of Russia made it a democracy, the undoing of America appears to be intended to make us a dictatorship. They may be looking forward to a bankrupt America to provide an excuse allowing Homeland Security to round up poor people and potheads for their concentration camps.

America vs. the rest of the world is not the way, (certainly not the American way), to go. I think America is inherently scared of sharing our prosperity. We know we represent something like 1% of the world using 90% of all resources, and we fear having to share that with the rest of the world. This is refutable. Economies can be grown like crops, and there is enough to go around. We seem to be most afraid of countries that are most like us. That obviously was our problem with the USSR, and Iraq is the only secular Muslim State in the Middle East. Even the "axis of evil" player Iran is the only Muslim democracy in the Middle East. The truth we will face, one way or the other is that the world has been shrinking and individual sovereignties are panicking because they are loosing control of the world. The powers that be desperately try to clamp down on our growing populations with Homeland security departments and new laws but when all is said and done, the meek shall inherit the Earth and the power mad shall be outnumbered and "made irrelevant." The ambitions of these right wing extremists are not without merit. Maintaining a dominant force in the world doesn’t have to be a bad idea, but they are implementing it like there is no tomorrow with all the bloodlust of Attila the Hun. All the goals of "Rebuilding America’s Defenses" could be implemented over a longer period of time successfully without turning us into the resurrection of Nazi Germany and without bankrupting the American economy. But that isn’t in the plan. America should save its soul and remain America. The UN isn’t a bad idea and Iraq is their business, not ours. Estimates on oil production gives us 20 to 40 years left of available oil, but that doesn’t have to mean we’ll have nothing to drive soon. There are too many solutions to account for the world’s problems.

America stands at this time at the crossroads between being America or Rome. Working democratically with the world is the best way for us to spread our American values of freedom and democracy. We the people need to wrest our foreign policy from the hate-filled warmongers currently in charge. This new foreign policy must favor the prosperity of the masses over prosperity of global corporations and elite aristocracies. America dominates the world best when it is with our American values. That is the American way and also incidentally what the rest of the world happens to love about us. The new foreign policy will either be Hitler’s or US and it is still our choice. If anything good can come from 9/11, it may just have been the emerging fact that now we as a people care about the rest of the world we were happy to ignore before. Rumsfield recently commented that Iraq couldn’t possibly become WWIII. Of this I’m not so sure but I do believe it could become another Vietnam. We lost Vietnam because adversaries like Russia and China were willing to provide whatever arms and money North Vietnam needed to defeat American invasion. The same countries have interests in Iraq, as well as in humbling the American Beast, which could make them the covert suppliers of a drawn out war we so far aren’t planning on. We have entrusted the planning of this war to warhawks who don’t even have any direct experience of war outside the games of politics. In 1939 Hitler responded to "Polish terrorism" with a pre-emptive strike that consequently rallied the rest of the world against Germany and began WWII. Americans need to make a stand and draw the line on this Iraq war issue to show the rest of the world how a democracy really works. The anti-war protests over the last couple months all over the world have been larger than even during Vietnam and a war hasn’t even been declared or started yet. We must fight for this because it is the very soul of our country and all we were raised to believe in, that we are fighting for. We must fight this "Pax Americana" even if we fail. That way at least when Bush and company are standing trial in the Hague for their war crimes, we will be able to sleep with ourselves at night resting assured that we did the right thing for the sake of the world we are about to become.