Democracy for Vancouver

No? Maybe just a little preemptive strike, then?

Bush has made me so gun-shy that even Obama’s Pax Americana talk is starting to scare me:

This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it. If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York. If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.

This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.

Instead of the world’s policeman, why don’t we try a few decades as the world’s Shriner clown? We can pick up all the shit our military has dropped over the last hundred years as it has paraded through countries that caused us no harm. We could build a few hospitals, entertain the people, and never kill or maim a soul.

We may think such a role is beneath us, but just think about all those old guys bellydancing down Main Street in their fezzes: they may look ridiculous, but they do a lot of good. And they clean up after themselves.

We could reduce our expenditures on military hardware and personnel so that we have only twice or three times what the next largest national military has, instead of ten times our nearest competitor. And we could use the “peace dividend” that results to retire our massive and unprecedented national debt, rebuild the dollar, pay reparations to the Iraqis and help get their country truly back on track, and reduce the amount of hatred and anger the world feels for the U.S.

Domestically, we could fully fund the care and education of our returning veterans and still have money left over for universal single-payer healthcare, free college education for all qualifying citizens, and the biggest infrastructure construction and rebuilding investment since the Great Depression.

We could invest in green technologies and wean ourselves off fossil fuels within ten years.

We could reduce green house emissions and invest in reforestation projects around the globe to trap decades of the carbon that we have released into our atmosphere.

But, with talk like Obama’s in Berlin, it looks like we’ll stay in the Big Stick business whether Obama wins or loses.

And that’s is something we should all grieve. Because while we do have the power to be the world’s policeman, with a change of motivation from fear and nationalism to compassion and humanism, we could build a global commonwealth of true freedom: political, social and economic.

But being the world’s policeman makes us feel much better about our national penis size - and keeps the GEs and Halliburtons of the world fat and greedy - so rational change is unlikely.

And that is the type of terrorism we should be fighting.