Unless Americans were savages and relished making bloodsport of foreign nationals and sacrificing their own for such adventures, the people must be lied to, coerced, manipulated to maintain over 100 years of US empire: and this is no foundation for a democracy.
It is the foundation for feudalism.
The lies started in the yellow press of the late 19th century when the ruling class wanted to expand US power to Asia [Guam and the Philippines] and the Caribbean [Puerto Rico and Cuba]. Later, the government sent troops into Haiti and other parts of Latin America.
If I wash and wax a car with no engine, bad tires, and stolen, and sell it to you as a new, pristine car, you've made a decision based on a blatant lie and can rightfully sue for your money and possibly get me thrown in a deep dark jail.
The US government has been just this kind of creepy car salesman, and the US voter the unlikely buyer.
In California, there is a lemon law to protect consumers from this sort of thing. Democracy - if it is to mean anything - must have a lemon law as well to hold liars in high office, who may employ false pretenses to send our children to foreign deserts and jungles to die, to account for their actions.
A Truth Commission is just a beginning. A Nuremberg Trial is required. Bigots are foaming at the mouth that bourgeois lesbian and gays who want to marry will destroy Traditional Marriage. These bigots need better be concerned with the state of our democracy and less with bourgeoisie who would rather little Chinese girls sew their designer garments to keep costs low.
The list of lies the Bush Administration disseminated to manipulate the public to support the Middle East occupations is legendary. But all those administration officials walk freely while there are still captives in Guantanamo who may never, ever see the light of day. This disconnect is corrosive. The US is no better than the convict colony it started as.
The new Obama administration has not been an improvement, offering us another set of lies about how conditions keep us as an occupying force. New guidelines are thrown in our faces to keep the troops as overlords.
We hold teachers and clergy to rigorous standards because they are in positions of power and influence. Why don't we hold our elected officials to these same standards? What does our cynicism say about our own belief in the democratic process.
In a 1968 interview, former Cuban president, Fidel Castro, noted that underdevelopment is not only economic - not only lacking in resources and technical skills. Underdevelopment, he said, is also intellectual, because a free people must first believe it is within their powers to activate radical social change.
Empires, like ours, like Great Britain's, like France's, like Belgium's, like Spain's, like Portugal's, like Germany's, like the Netherlands' are built on lies, and lies will only get you bad merchandise.
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