The Headless Horseman of the Apocalypse

By Norman Solomon
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

Thursday 11 January 2007

President Bush may be a headless horseman. But the biggest problem is what he rode in on.

Martin Luther King Jr. had a good name for it 40 years ago: "The madness of militarism."

We can blame Bush all we want - and he does hold the reins right now - but his main enablers these days are the fastidious public servants in Congress. They keep preparing the hay, freshening the water, oiling the saddle, even while criticizing the inappropriately jocular rider. And when the band plays "Hail to the Jockey," most of the grown-up stable boys and girls can't help saluting.

The people who actually live in Iraq have their own opinions, of course. UPI reported at the end of December that a new poll, conducted by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, found that "about 90 percent of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before the US-led invasion than it is today." Meanwhile, according to a CNN poll last month, 11 percent of Americans support sending more US troops to Iraq.