War Mom Says Bush, Obama The Same

Excerpt:   Richard Rubenstein, a conflict resolution professor at Washington's George Mason University, has written a soon-to-be-released book entitled "Reasons to Kill: Why Americans Choose War" that explores the arguments and images used to get people to support wars.

He agrees that Americans are still haunted by 9-11, and that's why the current anti-war movement is a pale imitation of the widespread, well-attended demonstrations that took place during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early '70s.

"The power of 9-11 is still with us, and that was a major trauma for a country that had convinced itself it was invulnerable to that sort of attack. It was incredibly shocking," he said Thursday.

"That trauma is still active and when things can be linked to it, as the Iraq war has been and now the Afghan war, even more so, it keeps the fears alive."

The Obama administration, he added, has done nothing to alleviate those fears while failing to clearly outline what its plans are in the Middle East. The confusion has only been exacerbated, Rubenstein says, as military generals and top administration officials frequently contradict one another when discussing long-term foreign policy goals.

"It's not the fog of war, it's the fog of Obama," he said.

"The administration has failed to give us a new paradigm for foreign policy, to talk about other ways of being in the world that aren't about empires. It's all cosmetic. There's nothing being done to calm people's fears or to help them think in a more long-term manner about what's good for America as well as the rest of the world in terms of foreign policy."

This quote from Dr. Rubenstein also appeared in the following article:

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