I enjoyed reading your hard-hitting commentary, Ms. Geller ["Senate votes on aiding al-Qaida on Sept. 11"]. The headline of the piece is a jaw dropper. History is replete with strange ironies like this.
In the 1950s, the problem bedeviling the free world was "how to contain Communism." The USA was then the indisputable leader of the free world.
But having traded the mantle of liberty for soft tyranny hardening fast, the American superpower is drained of moral authority and dangerously unpredictable. The free world now ponders "how to contain America."
It's indeed curious that the U.S. has fallen prey to the very "-isms" the nation battled in the 20th century. Consider our fierce red-hot wars against Nazism (Germany), fascism/corporatism (Italy), imperialism (Japan) and communism (North Korea). (Dictator Mussolini defined fascism as corporatism – "a merger of state and corporate power.") Then consider how frequently the U.S. government and big-government spawn have flashed the fangs of Nazism, corporatism, imperialism and communism since then.
This pattern of reverse transformation through war continues. The U.S. government launched wars against radical terrorist Muslims, notably al-Qaida, after 9/11. Seven years later, America elected a Muslim president, arguably a foreign factotum, who lied his way into office and removed checks against militant Islamic ascendancy in Libya and Egypt. Now, the bought-and-paid Obama administration, crazed Republican warmongers and tax-and-maim Democrat goose-steppers not only want to cozy up with al-Qaida terrorists in Syria, they want the U.S. military to fight al-Qaida's war, as well.
Rex Stiles