The Cult of "National Security"

Yesterday I commented on "The Cult of Social Security," America's blind faith in the government's ability to take care of us when we're old, despite overwhelming evidence that it can't and probably wouldn't if it could.

I have also compared the Republican Party to a cult, and the Democrats show similar symptoms.

One of the marks of a cult is the willingness of cult members to accept the teachings of the cult leader without question, without analysis.

This report from BBC News highlights "the cult of national security." The cult leader merely has to suggest something, not even come right out and declare it explicitly, and cult members will believe it. As many as 70% of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9-11, though there is no evidence for this. Fifteen of the 19 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia. The remaining four came from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon. According to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, this distribution reflects the proportions of trainees at al-Qaeda camps and the relative ease of obtaining U.S. visas for Saudi citizens.

North Korea, China, and even Pakistan, with approximately 50 nuclear warheads, are and were greater threats to U.S. security than Iraq.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are pathologically anti-Christian, while Saddam allowed greater freedom for Christian missionaries. Saddam Hussein was a dictator, but he was also more secular than Muslim, and Christians had freedom in Iraq, which is now being lost in in the new Islamic Theocracy created by Bush’s Global War on Christians. See also, The other Iraq war - The Washington Times: Commentary - March 29, 2005 and The End of Christianity in Iraq by Glen Chancy.

So why did the U.S. invade Iraq rather than Saudi Arabia? Why did the U.S. invade Iraq rather than North Korea, a dictatorial regime more lethal against its own people than Saddam's? (North Koreans live in bitter poverty; Iraq was one of the more modernized nations in the Middle East.)

Members of the Cult of National Defense never ask these questions.