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   I barely paid attention to the television commercial. An attractive 30-something man professed that he served in the war in Iraq, and he’s going back too. In his opinion, he is making the world a safer place for his son.

   We are winning on the ground, he proclaimed, and we will win the war. My ears perked up at the voiced opinion that I can not credit. Win?! 

   His next words floored me. People that are against the war “need to leave the politics out of it.”

   Later, when I watched a moment of the Republican Presidential debate, I caught another inane political statement. Responding to questions about his stance on the war in Iraq, Arkansas Governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee declared we need to stay in Iraq.

   “It’s about honor“ he explained. "We must honor the memory of the boys who have already died by making sure their deaths are not in vain." 

   Being against the war is being political?  Being for it is honoring the memory of American boys murdered in a cause with no point?  You might argue that freedom is the point. I understand this but I do not agree. “Political,” “freedom,” “honor,” “terrorists" - such words are an emotional manipulation that people respond to, much as they do to the words and deeds of those we call terrorists. 

   You see, television ad campaigns are by nature political. They cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to broadcast, and so by definition are an expensive yet powerful political tool. Mixed with a message designed to manipulate people’s emotions, this advertisement was created by people with a definite agenda – seeing the war continue.

   Wars, too, are by definition political  Still, who has ever conceived of campaigning for a war?  Should not wars be a necessary evil at best?  Who stands to really win?  

   Jaws dropped among some some, fingers pointing and tongues wagging, when former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan announced last week that the war is “all about oil.”  Some of us, however, delighted that a man with the credibility he enjoys had the courage to voice his opinion. But, how soon will the public listen? 

   It seems today that Americans thrive on apathy and complacency and revel in their own ignorance. As long as it isn’t me that something is happening to, it is OK, “it’s not my problem.”

   It has been a gradual process. I do not believe a singe time, place or event can be pointed to and declared as the cause, or the moment it began. Nevertheless, today we as Americans buy into and perpetuate social and political chaos every bit as much as terrorists do, just in a different way.

   Growing up, I was proud to live in the United States; it seemed no other country afforded its people the rights and freedoms we did. I looked at our country as a place where people are safe and the government is our protector. Such pride burned in my breast.

   Sadly, today I feel this is not the America our forefathers conceived of. We were founded with a vision of a country where right and good prevail and define justice, not merely the wishes of the most powerful. While the basis of the war is another long story, we must see that, in so many ways, we have a turned away from our original principles. Whether it’s laws against sagging pants, the war in Iraq, the death penalty or the war on drugs - pick your cause or morality legislation - still we refuse to see.

   Is this what we were meant to be, us, the greatest nation in the world?  How can we as a people continue to blindly believe in a judicial and political system that has been dying a slow death, smothered by self interest, misinformation and even evil sometimes? 

   And Americans allow this and even wallow in it. Our media perpetuates it; think of how much time was spent covering O.J. or Anna Nicole – and how much is spent asking hard questions and seeking the real truth.

   It crosses my mind that you could almost say that as the “repressive” communist bloc of Europe has become more truth-loving and freedom-seeking, the original authors of such notions, the Americans, have become more the bullies and the repressors.

   Here, we now must know that in a very real way, Big Brother is watching.

   Robert F. Kennedy Jr. opined in a lecture at the University of Arkansas at Monticello that an ignorant and uneducated populace "will trade freedom for safety," and in the end, they will have neither. He was right.

   Unfortunately, most of us just don’t care.

    Will we ever?