The turning point to fight for peace against the injustices of war occurs when unjust wars are waged by dominant imperialist powers. This would be the case if the United States is going to war in Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein in order to secure the oil fields for capitalistic gains. America chose to go to war in Iraq anyway as it had during the 1960s in the Viet Nam War. The ideology of the New Left prevailed in this anti-war argument as much as it did in the 1960s. Say what you might about the so-called immorality of the Left but it should be argued that fighting against war is a very moralistic undertaking which seems to have slipped out of the minds of the Armageddonists on the far right.

Peacemaking has to be the answer to avoid the costs of war within international conflicts. The President is only able to act in unilateral fashion pertaining to a possible pre-emptive first strike, as in Iraq, when citizens are not fully engaged in the political process, which points to apathy, signifying the lack of participatory democracy. Going to war is a failure to resolve conflict in a diplomatic manner, which will bring enormous human and financial costs giving way to a violent solution that does make peace the best alternative to the destruction of other nation‘s and people. To maintain a cold peace with Iraq in the present situation, the president needs to move cautiously rather than be so eager to wage war through an interventionist policy, and possible occupation of Iraq that does not guarantee stability or international peace. Finding a peaceful solution or an international consensus through the United Nations Security Council is imperative before the United States makes the decision to go to war in Iraq because unilateral action would obscure the original UN consensus for the Gulf War in 1991. Lacking consensus, impulsive unilateral action by the U.S. against Iraq would be an inconsistent diplomatic measure since the U.N. voted to sanction the first Gulf War in 1991, and the resolutions that followed. Taking a unilateral course might, consequently, leave the U.S. alienated internationally. A massive military barrage of demonstrative deadly weapons would see the United States winners in military terms, but, losers in the humanitarian sense with more dead innocent people. Iraq is not an imminent clear and present danger to the national security of the United States, but, the interests of America makes this an issue. It would be the United Nations and not the United States who would authorize the mandate to overthrow any leader from a sovereign state. Although the destructive nature of war has remained unchanged even if the methods and weaponry have changed dramatically. The military costs are high now for more lethal and destructive weapons as cruise missiles cost a million dollars, while the costs of making B-2 bombers is a billion dollars. In the Iraqi case, the absence of a peaceful diplomatic solution is sure to bring about war and the potential loss of thousand of innocent Iraqi people and more poverty. In replace of war the president would be better off to ensure that more foreign and economic aid is available to assist the sick and starving Iraqi people so they can live in peace and harmony, rather than threatening weapons inspections as the precursor to more destructive military action and war.

Despite court rulings, equal justice has not been actualized in America‘s public schools where economic disparity is most prevalent. To have any hope of participatory democracy an adequate education has to be fulfilled at the secondary and primary levels so all students are given the legal justice that guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, that does guarantee an equal education. This is a must to have proper integration of all classes in American society to promote a more informed population and a healthier democracy. There is no justice in American life when the poorest neighborhoods are not being funded properly which goes against the fundamental right of an equal public school education under the U.S. Constitution. Not all children are fortunate enough to afford a private secondary education, thus are enrolled in the public school system in America. A disproportionate amount of poor and lower middle-class schools are often not funded with parity due to Educational Cost Sharing that gives more rewards school districts more money who score higher on the Mastery Tests leaving the poorest school districts under-funded. Without equal funding in education a segment of the population is less likely to involved within a participatory democracy structure. Investing in people and promoting educational opportunities is the best way to ensure a healthy population, enhanced prosperity, and a renewal of participatory democracy. This is why it is imperative to continue allowing for college grants and job training despite the arguments grants increase the national debt.

In conclusion, the ideology of New Left liberalism must be maintained to continue the fight towards an equal and just society that promotes economic health over economic wealth for all people. The changes made now must be long-lasting consistent with transformational change to ensure that the goals of social progress are met, by keeping this vision moving forward, in American society. In the absence of a positive and lasting peace, international instability will sure be with all of us. Economic disparities will remain and so too will economic violence, also, known as poverty, because of instability. Providing an adequate education is the best measure towards a more invigorated democracy. In the absence of true equal justice, constitutional guarantees are sure to be left compromised with a greater probability that poor children will not receive an equal education as city schools are increasingly overcrowded and under-funded. Equality under the law must be upheld to allow those who are faced with poverty the same opportunities to succeed. In short, the function of equality, peace, justice, in relation to these issues are for the self-preservation and well-being of Americans who should be the first priority of the government, and any president who is sitting in the executive seat, rather than the last chair, in society. Mass movements of the 1960’s have never been extinct, but, rather highly effective, (civil rights movement, anti-war protests, gay riights movement, workers rights, women’s rights movement, environmental groups), and grassroots organization’s are still a must as those who have recently spoke out against the Iraq war have demonstrated, to further push for participatory democracy in America by promoting economic, social and political parity.

In retrospect of the United States 2004 Presidential election and the war in Iraq, let’s take a look at the work of a Leftist scholar named Samir Amin and see if his thoughts correlate with the essay above. Amin argues against the impending American Empire which threatens to undo every single program which was fought for by years of fighting for social justice and a better economic future by those people historically oppressed in the United States. The American Empire may have the adverse effect of destroying America within and making it the pariah of the world as it adopts policies which have economic and political repression written all over it. The Patriot Act, the war in Iraq, the coercive yet destructive Medicare Bill along with the proposal by the Bush administration to dismantle, not overhaul Social Security are prime examples of the continued decay of the political debate. The Bush administration thinks that privitization will solve all of the problems for the common good when in reality its a formula for more inequality and further economic conflicts for the individual American. The policy of the Bush administration for permanent war is the formula which will bankrupt the federal budget so much that the argument will be made that there is simply not enough money to pay out for any social program. Who will be left to fight America's Imperial wars? What incentive will Americans have when there are few jobs and no hope for a better future as programs for things like college loans and Pell grants are slashed? Is the impending future of America's youth death in permanent war? Is the inevitable future of America's elderly sickness and lack of finances a great way to live out one's last days? In Bushworld America, the investment of permanent war seems to have won out over the security of lasting peace. Americans spoke on November 2, 2004 supposedly supporting the extrme fringe right-wing agenda of the Bush administration over the past liberal policies which brought the GI Bill, Medicare, Social Security, and the availability of lower-to-middle class Americans to go to college with student loan programs and Pell grants.

Religious fundamentalism expressed through nationalism is a far greater threat than the liberalism described by Samir Amin. It could also be argued that the hegemon status of the United States in the world was not its direct intention, but brought about when Soviet communism collapsed. America which now holds the status of the world’s newest empire is not upholding the highest standards of morality by wielding its imposing military might on third world nations, such as Iraq.

America was founded upon the principles of the Enlightenment age, a liberal age, in which reason trumped faith. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison believed in the separation of church and state which is stipulated in the Constitution. (1) They were aware of religious wars wreaking havoc on societies, such as the crusades, so they set upon a course as to avoid these types of disasters on American soil. (2) As a result of argument and intense debate, one of the biggest freedoms in America was the “protection of minority groups from the tyranny of the majority”. (3) The founders were well aware that religious tyranny could occur, so they set out to confront this futuristic possibility. The result was the First Amendment which denied the Congress the power to make law “respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” (4) Despite the founders witnessing the Anglo-Protestants using their bibles as a justification to wipe out “infidels.” (5) the Puritan age in early America was home to the extermination of the Indians, American slavery, and segregation thereafter. America to this day has not excised its demons which were formulated in the Puritan age.

Although America has always had a strong presence of Protestantism, the present day Evangelical movement did not take fold in a large way until the Scofield Bible appeared in the early twentieth century. But it was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s when the Evangelical movement started to combat what it saw as cultural pollution such as the sexual revolution, the Feminist Movement of women’s rights, and the Gay Liberation Movement. Once minority groups started to get their civil rights in the fight for equality, they were met with equal and opposite resistance from the likes of Phyllis Schlafley of the Eagle Forum and the Reverend Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. For a brief moment in American history, it appeared that the calls of social justice by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the modern civil rights movement (1960s)would bring about equal rights for all people, but religious conservatives rejected this platform at the beginning of the 1980s. In short, the founding founders philosophy of protecting minority rights and the ideal of a pluralistic society was met with much dissatisfaction by preachers like Pat Robertson and Falwell. Denying civil rights in the United States is consistent with the policies to deny human rights internationally, which is supported by the religious fundamentalists who are tied to the Republican Party.

At the same time that Christian fundamentalism became more powerful in the political domain in America, the Iranian Revolution in 1979 ushered in a new era of Islamic fundamentalism, as well as opposition to secularism. With the rise of the Likud Party and Menachem Begin, Jewish fundamentalism took hold in Israel. Thus, the onset of the 1980s saw the advent of religious fundamentalism, or what also may be depicted as populist movements. Despite all this new fervor of religious fundamentalism, leaders of all nations continued to point to secular institutions such as the Constitution and the United Nations when it needed to justify either acts of discrimination, or acts of war, while, ignoring the basic teachings of Jesus, who said when you do it to the least of my brothers, you do onto me, or turn the other cheek, as well as feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Since the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980, the religious right not only has been the most active faction in the Republican Party but influences public policy decisions. Although the religious right may claim it opposes social engineering for other groups, it has deftly co-opted this practice for its own narrow causes, whether fighting against gay rights, abortion rights, AIDS research and a pluralistic society. The religious right wants to maintain the patriarchal system of society as well as the traditional family. The religious right have been the biggest supporters of the war in Iraq and blindly support the American-Israeli policy in the Middle East.

How does one reconcile the religious right’s support of war and the plummeting of the environment when they point to both Armageddon and an apocalypse as a justification for their rationalizations? Militarism and chauvinism has always been a staple of American life. Existential thought overtook the old American tradition of naturalistic ideology, of which was part of the landscape until the 1950s. If it could be said that the naturalistic order justifies the acts of aggression over lesser peoples or nations, then one may say that the existential school of thought professes self-determination. In 2004, America has regressed backwards in time to the naturalism of the 1950s. 

The manifest destiny of the United States predated the advent of the Cold War and the concept of collective security in the United Nations to bring about international law as to avoid another World War I or World War II. The notion of collective security became an even more important reality when the United States embarked upon a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, in the bipolar struggle. Nuclear arms and religious fundamentalism are a dangerous mixture, but I maintain that rational thought is the best deterrence against its convergence. Despite Amin’s criticism of liberalism as a virus, it is this very ideology which serves as the best buffer against an apocalyptic end to civilization.

The United States became the sole military superpower in the world with the fall of the Soviet Union which ended the Cold War. Without the old Cold War bipolar axis, the U.S. has adopted a more arrogant foreign policy without any nation able to contest American hegemony. In the Cold War period the United States, Japan, and Western Europe were brought “into a unified camp,” which could be analyzed as manipulation by America, which used these alliances to play off nations against one another, for the sole interest of capital expansion.

The attacks against America on 9-11-2001 gave the Bush administration a pretext to exert a more muscular or even chauvinistic nationalism in both Afghanistan and Iraq due to military superiority. Although the embrace of militarism is nothing new in America, the expression of fervent nationalism is not only odd, but unusual in the American fabric. Since the attacks of 9-11, the Bush administration has set out to expand U.S. hegemony through unilateral military adventurism while disregarding international law and the concept of collective security of the United Nations. It appears now that the Bush administration has taken a social Darwinist, survival of the fittest mentality, which mirrors the naturalistic forces which was a staple of American life into the 1950s. President Bush has drawn authoritarian lines in the desert sand of a Manichean struggle of the good Americans versus the bad terrorists, (Arabs of the Islamic faith who resist U.S. power). The mantra of President Bush after the attacks on America, that “either you are with us or with the terrorists” should have been more of an eye opener for those who believe in rational thought or open political debate, as to the absolutism of the new Republican Party which is greatly influenced by the likes of the Moral Majority. Bush also allowed the word “crusade” to slip out of his mouth on September 16, 2001, following the attacks on America. Thus, one could interpret the Bush at war phenomenon as the crusade of Christianity based on the Manichean ethic of good versus evil, or, even that “my God is bigger than yours.”

The isolation of the Bush administration has already led two nations to renew their nuclear arms programs. Since President Bush specified the “axis of evil” nations during his State of the Union Address in 2002, both North Korea and Iran have moved to reconstitute their nuclear arms programs, despite the opposition of U.S. lawmakers. In the future America could well face the possibility that Europe no longer wants to be allied with the United States. It is also possible that the powers in Europe will pursue their own individual foreign policies away from NATO, and the old Cold War lineups. In a time when there is a lack of diplomacy as a result of the pre-emptive military doctrine, the threats of human destruction is very real.

Amin is correct when he says that the “preventive war” strategy adopted by the Bush administration with its National Security Strategy of 2002, “eliminates international law.” The Bush administration had no “right” to invade Iraq in March of 2003, as there was no imminent threat as the failure to find weapons of mass destruction clearly demonstrates. Thus, the war in Iraq was of choice, rather than necessity, which has led world public opinion against the United States in France, Germany, Russia, and China. Thus, Amin is correct when he says that it is the United States, not Iraq, which “threatens all of humanity,” with its military prowess. The self-defense argument was an illegitimate “mandate” as the UN Charter explicitly states that pre-emption must be proved by an “imminent threat.” So even though there was a “no” consent vote in the UN Security Council to invade Iraq, the Bush administration used unilateral force anyhow. France and Russia both voted against the war in Iraq which President Bush ignored, anyway. I agree with Amin that nations who signed on to Bush’s illegal war program in Iraq act as the “servile political classes.” However, Jacques Chirac of France stood up to President Bush in the same way Churchill opposed Hitler. The unilateral action of President Bush makes him more like Hitler, while Tony Blair can be compared to the appeaser, Neville Chamberlain, rather than Winston Churchill “who chose to reject Hitler.”

It is often pointed out that Iraq was in violation of numerous UN resolutions, but, the Bush administration conveniently ignores that Resolution 678 calls for a nuclear free Middle East. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, who are all American allies have nuclear arms which is not consistent with the calls to end these programs, as stipulated in UN Resolution 678. With the possibility of an increase in the nuclear arms race, the notion of armageddon rooted in Revelations of the New Testament or Jihad becomes more real as nations stubbornly hold onto their dogmatic ideological viewpoints. For some in the Evangelical movement destroying the world with nuclear armageddon is of biblical prophesy, while others argue that man does not have the moral authority to end the world by destroying the “earth which God created.”

Amin argues that the Bush administration’s power grab of more oil reserves in Iraq or Afghanistan is mainly for investment reasons, rather than fighting terrorism or exporting Lockean “democracy.” One also could argue that Bush’s “preventive wars” are nothing short of rapid expansion to encircle both China and Russia with the American presence in the Caspian Sea. Therefore, one could argue that the U.S. is acting like a “predator” to control the oil reserves in Iraq.

Although the UN may not be restored to “all their proper functions,” as Amin suggests, international pluralism may have to be attained without American participation. As America expands its empire across the globe there may be no alternative but for other nations to form alliances which would challenge the new world order plans of the Bush administration. France, Germany, China, and Russia combined may offer a formidable challenge to the United States from technology-to-finance-to-military. Amin says that “forming an anti-hegemonist front is today the very first priority, just as forming an anti-Nazi alliance was yesterday” because the “American challenge and its criminal ambitions force this response.” Amin argues that Europe would benefit by ending relations with the United States so it could work on its own economic and social progress.

Amin may be right when he says that the United States is mainly interested in its hegemon status of “remaking the world in the image of Texas,” but his ambiguity gives way to subjective interpretation. If the “image of Texas” means American isolation in the world with a foreign policy doctrine of unilateralism which uses military force against real or imagined threats, then Amin is correct. If Amin also means that there are threats to pluralistic democracy in America than he would not be too far off the mark, as the recent 2004 elections indicate. The majority of Americans support the decisions made by the Bush administration, (the war in Iraq and the war on terror) as the recent 2004 presidential election indicates. The religious right led the fight to repress rights by placing amendments on the ballot to ban gay marriage in eleven states in which case the majority of people said “yes” to pass these initiatives, pointing only to the ongoing decay of democracy in the United States. Whether other nations want to be allied with the United States in President Bush’s second term is not yet clear. But days after the November 2, 2004 election the American dollar declined while the Euro increased in value. Amin argues that the U.S. economy would collapse if the Germans, Japanese, Chinese, and Saudis removed their accumulated capital which are held in American banks.

Despite its flaws, liberalism is still the best way to deal with the increasing isolationism of America and the Bush administration’s military adventurism. Although Amin infers that “liberalism” “is a grave challenge to all of humanity, threatening it with self-destruction,” I believe that he is referring to the Bush administration‘s policies. America’s perverse 2004 military budget exceeds the amount of money it spent during the height of the bipolar conflict with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Thus, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S. military spending amounts to more money than the next twenty-five nations combined after it, but comes at the expense of the general welfare of Americans as basic social services are being slashed in favor of war, which points to the lack of humanity.

In conclusion, unless rational thought can stymie the onset of this strict doctrinaire religious and military makeover, then intense nationalism will dominate all aspects of American life. It is unilateralism and nationalism combined with Christian fundamentalism which has brought about opposition to the United States from other nations. Amin is correct that the extreme right controls the power in Washington, but he fails to mention that the radical right of the Republican Party rejects the Enlightenment period of Western civilization, favoring Biblical law over constitutionalism of the liberal age. In sum, I argue that the only way for the United States to avoid a path of religious law or tyranny is to maintain the mixed government professed by John Locke.