Granted, it’s now two years later, but I’d like to just point out that we are still fighting in Afghanistan and that the Taliban is increasing its offensive…which is to say, they haven’t given up the fight and its getting bigger every day. Just today, the Taliban killed 60 people and damaged a weapons manufacturing plant.

I do mean the people in charge because they are the ones brain washing the people to do the car bombings. So maybe the “soldiers” are doing it for those reasons but in reality they are doing it for money. The leaders know what is at stake.

And with Iraq, are you telling me that the people who are blowing themselves up in the streets and in car bombs are fighting for money or power?

You have to remember that actual, living and breathing individuals are conducting this war, and not all of them are in it for the money. The leaders: maybe, but not necessarily. Just because our culture will only go to war for economic reasons doesn’t mean it is that way everywhere else. Some people actually believe in things.

Wow that is bad. Lets have a group of people who are uninformed and easily swayed by the media supercede people whose job it is to win wars.

Secondly the people we are fighting in Iraq are fighting to protect what way of life? These people are fighting for money/power which is what most people fight for. Whoever controls iraq and the billion doallr a day oil reserve wins. Don’t try to turn this into anything but that.

My question about a president disregarding constitutional restraints obviously come from the wiretap scandal, but they’re inspired also by the way the Executive branch abuses its power, refusing to allow Congress the right to oversee its actions (refusing perhaps not in voice, but definitely in deed). The fact that we went to war on false pretenses is evidence one (and until you’re ready to address the neocons’ wholesale takeover of the intelligence gathering agencies in the lead up to the war — which is a point I don’t think you have EVER addressed in this forum — don’t say nothing about everyone thinking Hussein had WMDs).

As for the second, I’m with you, but I’m wondering why I haven’t heard much talk of corporate totalitarianism, although I’m sure that it’s out there if you search for it.

On the third, the power vaccuum is not within a state, but between other states. She was talking about the communism/democracy power-vaccuum, whereby any movement of one precipitates movement of another: hence the domnio-theory. Now that Saddam has been removed from power, the United States has created a power vaccuum that is sucking in the insurgents and the non-Iraqi combatants, all of whom are fighting for power in a place where it is currently up for grabs.

My question, though, transfers the concept of a power vaccuum to a power explosion. The president’s vision of democracy spreading outwards from Iraq is the reverse of the communist threat that us children of 80’s were taught to fear (until the events of 1989 taught us to laugh).

Is it any wonder that those who would oppose American hegemony — and that is what they fight; they don’t kill Americans to oppose democracy; why wouldn’t they attack the Swiss [unless, of course, the Swiss pissed them off by drawing funny little pictures of their prophet]? — is it any wonder that those who would oppose American hegemony would see Iraq as their great stand?

They fight us for the same reason we fought the communists. To protect a way of life. And it is a way of life, like it or not, that is threatened by the continuing expansion of American hegemony. Is it any wonder they fight? And is it any wonder that they will continue to fight?

There should be some sort of check in place to make sure companies do not aquire that much power. I do not have an answer for that.

The third is a tad different because iraq was not an empty vacuum waiting to be filled by the good guys or bad guys, it was already filled by the bad guy.