It's an unfortunate fact but the reality is that our leaders care more about being re-elected than in the good of their countries. What Bush, Blair and Howard know is that being leader during a good war is great for the prospects on election day. They all learned their lessons from Thatcher who was re-elected with some ease after stong nationalist feelings were evoked by the Falklands war.
Johnny Howard played the anti-terrorist anti-refugee card at the last election. Now he's being the tough guy with his pre-emptive strike on Asian countries call. Steve Bracks knows it works, Bob Carr does too.
Behind all the crocodile tears our leaders need an enemy that they can rally patriotism against. If there's no obvious enemy then they create one. Milosevic was the first to get the treatment. Bin Laden was CIA trained and funded but became the anti-christ when it was convenient, and long before September 11. Saddam Hussein is the latest stooge. The Bush Blair partnership tried to convince us that he had links to Al-Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction. The rest of the world saw straight through it but the US will make sure that a war happens even if the weapons inspectors find nothing.
The other reason that war is good is that the US depends on a gi-normous military expenditure which effectively serves to stimulate the economy. No enemy, no budget. It's ironic that conservative US governments preach non-interventionism but pump money into the economy by huge spending on ever more sophisticated ways to kill people. I mean really, what credible threat is there to the integrity of the United States that would justify defence spending of US$3000,000,000,000 per year? Bush is certainly paying back his campaign funders and the world is a less safe place for it.
