IMPERIAL MOURNING

"Preventive Warriors," a documentary about the National Security Strategy of the United States issued by the White House in September of 2002, is the perfect antidote to Dear Leader's Memorial Day ravings (a pious official proclamation for "a day of prayer for permanent peace" and an imperial radio address to the nation that the U.S. will continue to "wage the war on terror and spread freedom across the world").

Watch "Preventive Warriors" online. This 2004 documentary, featured today on "Democracy Now!," presents expert commentary by Chalmers Johnson, Noam Chomsky, Rahul Mahajan, Phyllis Bennis, Mark Lance, Maria Ryan, Michael Klare, Tariq Ali and others on the neocon doctrine of preventive war and the current U.S. regime's ambition to dominate the world, militarily, economically and culturally.

The doctrine is rational "within a lunatic framework," Chomsky points out, which is "not so unusual." What is unusual, says Chalmers, is the in-your-face aspect of the strategy for "military dominance" originally laid out by Paul Wolfowitz in 1992. Chalmers also says he does not believe neocons are conservatives at all, new or old, but rather "serious radicals committed to the militarization of the country."

Or as Klare notes, there is a "crusading spirit" reflected in all the documents, an implicit belief in American exceptionalism because "we're chosen," and it is "this mode of thinking [that] is deeply embedded in the Bush administration." All of these document, Klare asserts, "are driven by arrogance."

Dear Leader, above, placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery for all Americans to see. But his mismanagement of the war in Iraq -- including poorly armored Humvees, insufficient troop levels and no "peace" planning -- means the deaths of more soldiers whose coffins his regime allows no Americans to see as they are being brought home for burial.