To the editor:

It is now becoming apparent that what many predicted over a year ago has come to pass. Namely, that a war in Iraq was not an attack on terror but a war fought on behalf of the Bush family and their rationalizing, ideologue buddies. These individuals are not concerned with assessing the reality of the situation after 9-11, but in carrying out their own agenda. And it’s making matters worse.

This attests to the power of a national mythology — the stuff that everyone wants to believe but is largely untrue. We woke up from our nationalistic trance when 58,000 young men and women were killed during the Vietnam conflict. The grandiose schemes of the power hungry nearly always end in disaster for the rest of us.

The first Gulf War served to pull us back into a trance (sold at the time as “feeling good about America again”), and so we’re willing to believe anyone who whispers sweet nothings in our ears while sending our family members to be bullet-stoppers in their dreams of empire. When the British did this, we rebelled and started our own country. Alas, we have become what we rebelled against.

It may be that we were once a republic that answered to the will of the people. Now, government answers only to the very wealthy, and puts on a show every election year to give the appearance of doing the will of the people. George II has brought this corruption to an unprecedented level.

Doug Harvey,

Lawrence