This is madness

From the very beginning of this country's history we have used a technique to marginalize foreign (and some not so foreign) leaders with whom we disagree. From King George III to Napoleon to Saddam Husssein, all have been deemed mad.

I watched a rerun of a television program called No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed. I believe the episode was titled "The Tyranny of Reason". In it they discussed the (at the time) imminent US invasion of Iraq and the idea that Saddam was mad or pre-modern therefore we could not use diplomacy to deal with him so we were left with no option except force.

Below is a list of some of the leaders whom we have deemed "mad":

• Muammar al-Qaddafi
• Fidel Castro
• Manuel Noriega
• Ayatollah Khomeini
• Saddam Hussein
• Kim Jong-il
• Nikita Khrushchev
• Slobodan Milosevic
• Mao Tse-tung
• Hugo Chavez
• ...and many more

This isn't really unique to the United States, many European monarchs were rumored to be mad, even back to Roman times there were "mad" rulers--Caligula, Claudius, Nero, etc. And in America, even Lincoln's opponents called him mad.

This would be an interesting dissertation topic.

The funny thing is that it works every time. Americans are willing to believe that an unstable madman has taken over some country and is a threat to the world and we must act to stop him.

"But," you say, "Fidel Castro has ruled Cuba for 45 years. Why haven't we overthrown him?" Well, we tried. This version of the bearded madman is 90 miles away from us and has klled tens of thousands of his own people, yet we go half way around the world to "bring democracy" and "liberate" the people of Iraq.

If George W. Bush were leader of some distant country what would we say about him?