A recent flap in a British news program sheds a bit of light on something similar in the US. It seems that a political rival of a popular candidate sent a BBC newscaster a little information, which was supposed to be damaging to an opposition party candidate. Turns out, the information was a little bit about nothing and the network is wondering if it has been played for a stooge.

Hmm. This is sure a familiar theme these days.

Let’s take a drive down memory lane, here for a minute. The word “stooge” apparently came in to the language about 1913 during the Vaudeville era. One dictionary defines the word as :

1 a: one who plays a subordinate or compliant role to a principal b: puppet 3

What I am getting at here is that there is a lot going on in the country these days: war, national debt crisis, global warming, crime, and so forth. Many armchair pessimists continue to believe that the public is being used as puppets, in a variety of issues. Briefly put, somebody is yanking our chains and we are dancing like a herd of string puppets.

As far as ‘the war’ is concerned, we have knee jerkism on both sides of the fence. The pro-war crowd says we gotta fight them over there, so we won’t fight them here. The anti-war crowd says we’re playing into Osama’s hands and playing his game.

Bin Laden’s goal was to draw the United States into a costly war in the Middle East. By doing so, he aimed to drain the American treasury, strain our supply lines and turn us into his own personal recruiting tool.

Hello! Anybody smell the chittlins here?

Saddam was a nasty piece of work, but before we kicked him off his throne and sent him dangling at the end of a short rope, there were few terrorists in Iraq. Now the place is a fertile breeding ground for terrorism. Every “accidental shooting” of Iraqi civilians by American forces breeds scads of terrorist wannebes.

We have a whole tribe of folk who are using us as their own little stooge. The Saudis cannot remain in power without the financial and military support of the United States government, not to mention the American oil industry.

Who do they call? The American Stooge.

Many critics of current and past American foreign policy as it pertains to the Middle East say the United States has two deadly blind spots: Israel and Saudi Arabia. Our blind spots are leading us to make unrealistic military and diplomatic decisions in the region.

When revolutionaries all over the world want to send their followers up in foaming mouth frenzies, who do they name—their old friend the American Stooge. Isn’t it wonderful to be blamed for everything but the price of sand in the Gobi Desert?

Some of this mess is our fault. Some of it isn’t, but we are a convenient target and our would be enemies and wanna be revolutionaries are beating that dead horse with a vengeance. The Great American Satan is to blame for everything—their own corrupt leaders have to keep the fire of rage, revolution, fundamentalism, fascism, tribalism and extremism burning brightly using American economic and foreign policy as their primary fuel.

Many in the Arab world say our blind acquiescence to Israel’s inhumane treatment of the Arabs and Palestinians within its borders leads Arabs and other to think that the US will support Israel no matter what the Israeli leaders do, no matter how many human rights directives they break.

On the other hand, the Israelis say they have the right to defend themselves. And, as a consequence of their being vastly outnumbered by a sea of hostile forces and surrounded by neighbors who have long since declared that they want to push Israel into the sea, they have resorted to Draconian measures to ensure their own survival.

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