National Interest

Regarding Pat Buchanan's column headlined "National Interest Comes First." In the Nov. 24 column, where he quoted Condi Rice,"for 60 years my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East region and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people." This is high fallutin' horse patootie. Closer to the truth in the Middle East is Pat's observation that "anti-Americanism there is pandemic."

The reality of 60 years of Chalabis, Musharraf figure-heads and their moves to ouster justice of any kind except autocratic kings and generals that we support, speaks volumes to Muslims everywhere but in America, where it's business as usual.

The irony of "Pakistan's situation of 170 million Muslims with nuclear weapons in political chaos" overstates the power of democracy, both in Pakistan and in America. Political chaos is caused by politicians who recommend that every nation stop proliferation except themselves. If history teaches us anything, it tells us that the U.S. will lose, misplace, sell, or have stolen another stockpile of weapons and that our policy of preemptive or preventive wars borders more on imperial intervention.

The danger over looked by Pat is not the 170 million Muslims acting as a democracy; the danger is having no fail-safe system in place by autocratic leaders acting like Nero.

Garrison Keiller noted that our current occupants put the government at the service of the W. Lance Andersons among us and (Bush) appointed a regiment of W. Lances to high office and here we are, seven years later, holding the bag.

The danger with foolproof planning is that fools are so ingenious. That's the "national interest" we can world bank on.

LaVerne Chadderdon
Sebring