-- On 14 Sep 2001, at 20:58, keyser-soze@hushmail.com wrote:
War is the health of the State.
Terrorism is a good pretext for taking away our rights. A war to destroy terrorist regimes is a less good pretext, and if it succeeds, will remove one pretext. The end of the war will also spark a demand for a return to normality, similar to the anti socialist wave we saw in many english speaking countries at the end of World War II. Socialism, introduced under the pretext of war, was discredited by its association with the privation and authoritarianism of war.
War in the old conception was temporary: the idea was explicitly that the state of war would end, and that the normal rules of democracy would resume once their conditions had been reestablished.
What George Bush is promising, truthfully or untruthfully, is just such a war. A war where the good guys storm into the bad guy's presidential palace, and then come home to a victory parade, where upon everything returns to normal. All wars are bad for freedom, but the war that George Bush promises is far less bad for freedom than unending terrorism. Of course the previous Bush promised "read my lips, no new taxes." --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 1jV9etU3Tx6MJ9qdy97PFd24d9cqTlSgfWko3Xfz 4RSLKINEhK51FoPxlzP2C784tzxRjBqICVKcorKjR