E Pluribus Unum

Because we suffer from white guilt.

It began, I believe, in a late-20th-century event that transformed the world more profoundly than the collapse of communism: the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty...

The collapse of white supremacy--and the resulting white guilt--introduced a new mechanism of power into the world: stigmatization with the evil of the Western past. And this stigmatization is power because it affects the terms of legitimacy for Western nations and for their actions in the world.

In Iraq, America is fighting as much for the legitimacy of its war effort as for victory in war. In fact, legitimacy may be the more important goal.

Seriously -- who is this guy describing? Michael Dukakis? No -- he's writing this during a period of global hegemony by the neoconservative branch of the Republican party. George W. Bush has unlimited power to do what he wants -- and he suffers from white guilt?

This is straight out of Dr. Strangelove.

If what he says is true, then Bush and the Republican majority in Congress need to be sent packing immediately. Because if you are going to fight a war -- if you are going to invade a country and impose democracy at the end of a gun barrel -- then this kind of tortured mentality is more destructive and and self-defeating than almost anything else I can think of.

If you are the kind of pointy-headed neo-conservative intellectual that believes this crap, then you need to get out of government immediately.

Better not to invade in the first place than to get bogged down in this kind of war and suffer 20 thousand American casualties, $300 billion in losses from the Treasury and the wrecking of our reputation around the world for at least the next generation.