After the Cold War ended, our arms manufacturers were in an uncomfortable position. The capital investment they had made in a very lucrative business was now in decline. What to do?? Find a new enemy to which popular fear and hatred could be directed. (By the way, this has been played out exactly as George Orwell predicted in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.) Muslims and the West had, after centuries of struggle, for the most part had their respective needs accommodated and, with the breakup of European colonial empires, were living in harmony. However, the Islamic world-view is alien enough to the West to make Muslims targets of suspicion and hatred. So the popular press started telling us all kinds of things evil dictators in Muslim countries were doing.

Before the first Gulf War, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq told Saddam that the U.S. would not intervene if he annexed Kuwait. This was a set-up job and he took the bait. The American war machine was back in action!

So now we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year fighting a flea bite enemy while the cancers of chronic deficit spending, illegal immigration, an infrastructure wholly dependent on cheap energy, specifically from petroleum now in decline, and global warming go essentially unaddressed. The American people are now the dupes for supporting this dangerously misguided program and the United States will suffer many unfortunate consequences for allowing this idiocy to continue.

With the planet under assault from the demands of 6,500,000,000 + Homo sapiens and the number rising by the second, the only sure path to a better, more environmentally friendly, healthier future is to reduce our numbers to the point that they can be sustained indefinitely. We all must recognize that the resources that have been used to build these huge numbers are depletable and are being depleted: petroleum, arable land, commercially mineable mineral ores, specifically metals, and fresh water. Yes, in many parts of the world, including the America West, aquifers are being pumped down faster than they are replentished by rainfall.

China waited too long before waking up to the huge liability of dense population and is paying a terrific price in trying to put on the brakes at the edge of the precipice with its one-child-per-family policy. Do we really want our children to be faced with the strain this is going to put on Chinese society? A much more reasonable ethic to adopt would be the widespread recognition of the limit of parent replacement in family planning. This would lead to a much more gradual, "soft landing" type of population reduction than the Chinese will experience, as many people cannot have or don't want children. Mr. Rose and his two successive wives would be entitled to 3 offspring among themselves before experiencing societal disapproval in one form or another. I personally hope government is able to stay out of this and let people realize for themselves the personal and social advantages of limiting family size. If you want more kids, then adopt!

Americans are already moving in this direction: my father was one of nine, I am one of four, and I have two now young adult offspring. Germany and Japan are have also peaked in population and, over the next few decades, may begin to approach sustainable population levels. The sooner we begin to follow their example, the less traumatic will be the negative social and economic consequences of living in a nation with a declining population and the sooner we can begin to appreciate living in a country with less stress and more elbow room.

Senator Clinton has had the misfortune of being demonized by the neocon faction of the Republican Party, so that even those who are in the process of emerging from its delusions are still likely to have a nauseated visceral reaction to her name. This is in spite of the fact that she represents in many ways a kinder, gentler path to the same goal of corporate hegemony over political power and world resources.

To those who have fought relentlessly against the neocon agenda over the last six or seven years, she appears as an opportunist and appeaser. They will only support a candidate who has made a clean break with the neocons and their policies that have brought debt, moral decay, and dishonor to our government while serving to enrich and empower the wealthy elite.

I hope she will stand down from this campaign, being possibly the only Democrat for whom many Democrats, Independents, and Republicans would not vote as an alternative to just about anyone the Republican Party nominates.

Besides, who isn't already tired of the prospect of continuing this pingpong game of families in the presidential succession?

because The Weekly Standard doesn't allow web posting of responses to its articles.

Salon offers an open critique of government policy and a forum in which that critique is itself critiqued. This is the nature of a truly liberated society and press.

The Weekly Standard, the Neocon organ roughly equivalent to Salon, offers no such opportunity for critique, either positive or negative. Its nature and tone is authoritarian and reflects the qualities of the regime it supports.

The real enemy of Constitutional government and human freedom is not so much the Iraqi taking potshots at our occupying troops, but the guy sitting in the room next to the Oval Office concocting new ways of subverting the Constitution and imposing the will of the neocon triumvarate (Cheney, Rove, Bush) on this nation by lies, intimidation, and force if necessary. His abuse of the Vice Presidency is very well documented. Go to Rep. Dennis Kucinich's website to read the Articles of Impeachment that have been introduced against Mr. Cheney in the House and then write your representative in Congress and demand action on this matter.