Ever since shortly after the shocking events of September 11, 2001, I have had a comment of some sort at this page on my web site. My voice has been primarily one of dissent. It was quiet dissent at first as I hoped that the rhetoric of the Bush administration would pan out to have some truth to it. It appears, as time has passsed, that there was less truth than I had hoped.

As I write I have just heard a few words of our vice-president, Dick Cheney. He's the one who thinks that it's so important for the president to be able to get "candid" advice from people (who are either greedy, amoral, profit hounds who couldn't care a bit about the well being of other human beings or are collosally idiotic brainless and spinless individuals who can't figure out what's going on in their own company) that it would be inappropriate for the public to know what was said. The sheer stupidity of these assertions gives me cause to seriously doubt anything he has to say, and the comments I just heard didn't let me down.

Mr. Cheney told a gathering of the Council on Foreign Relations that we had to destroy the forces of international terrorism. This war, he said, would not end with negotiations or a treaty. We should not "rest" until we had totally destroyed these terrorist organizations. He then went on to broadly praise the Bush administration's handling of the war, the economy, etc., etc. "Hey folks, we haven't made any mistakes yet!" [Yeah, and I hold ownership rights to a bridge between two New York Islands....]

Now I will grant you that on the surface the remarks about not ending the war with a treaty sound sensible. There is no national government with which to negotiate; there is no greater population we can empower to keep their government in check. But let's use our brains and imaginations, along with the information we have so far, to really check this assertion out. First of all, can we destroy this "organization?"

No, I contend. First of all, despite a 30-million-dollar-a-day military campaign, the widespread bombing of a country that had already been bombed back to the "stone age," and intensive operations with the most technologically advanced intelligence-gathering equipment available to the military, the two main targets of our wrath remain at large. This has so infuriated us that we're taking it out on a misguided American youth found among the prisoners in Afghanistan. [If you've heard the evidence to be used against him, you understand that our right to criticize our own government is being challenged.] At any rate, we already know that we are in as much danger from disgruntled citizens as we are from angry foreigners.

Second, this group was not created by some evil mastermind who has great power over the minds of people half a world away from him. No human is that powerful or has that much charisma. This group has been created by the frustrations of living in a world where your own legitimate interests have not been sanely and rationally dealt with for decades or longer and where the current world political environment makes it quite clear that your complaints won't be heard any time soon (try "in your lifetime").

How do we prevent these frustrated individuals from taking the only action that seems open to them? Ultimately, you don't. You have to deal with their concerns in a genuinely caring manner; you have to give up a few "sacred" beliefs; you have to learn to see the world as God must see it, through the eyes of every individual on the planet. Then you have to start acting in ways that make sense for everyone, not just the privileged few who live in this country (which is making it harder and harder to become a member of this privileged group through immigration laws).

In short, the real, long-term answer to the problem of internatonal terrorism lies in exactly the opposite approach to world affairs of the one taken by the Bush administration. And in the wake of the multilateralism that marked the first few months after the attacks on the United States, Bush had made it clear that unilateralism is still the watchword of his foreign policy. The United States will do what it wants in the world without regard to the needs and interests of others because we have the military and economic might to do so.

Which leads me to the economy. Mr. Cheney, perhaps rightfully, gives the Bush tax cut credit for the apparent economic upturn. But the return to deficit spending to fund a dubious military campaign seems destined to undo the foundation of the economic boom of the '90s. That boom was sidetracked by the greed of those who tried to make money on companies that were still losing money. The fall of Enron, which should have been wallowing in the cash bilked from angry California energy consumers (whose elected representatives had far less access to the president than the executives described in the second paragraph of this document) was a sign of the destructive power of such greed.

So where will Mr. Bush take this country in his seemingly unbridled arrogance? The beauty of our political system is that he can't take us anywhere we don't willingly go. If the American public sees the rhetoric of this administration for the inflating hot air it really is, they will speak through their elected representatives and the power of Mr. Bush to go where he wants to go will be checked. He will complain long and loud; he will question the patriotism of his opponents; he may even try to link them to Osama bin Laden, but he will not get to go there anyway.