Re: Neo-Conservatism and its Roots in Warfare State Propaganda
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The threat was real - The actually extent of and which threats were potentially most harmful or dangerous or real can be argued about. And all countries (i.e. governments and public and private entities) trump up the threat of others for various propaganda reasons that are not hard to figure out.
Usually, but not always, the threats as perceived at the time turn out to be less dangerous than judged by the people involved, but this is seldom seen at the moment and the passage of time allows for historical and objective analysis to offer up its judgment. But this is certainly easier accomplished from the comfort of a library or archive and without the tense emotional involvement of the moment, the zeitgeist of the times, and within the context not only of hindsight but with the ability to rubber-stamp your own perspective and bias on the subject of study.
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This is a dangerously apologetic, and fallacious, view of history in my opinion. Foreign military adventurism has been actively sought by the United States government practically from its founding. Any random event can and will be used as a pretext for war (USS Maine), and if no event presents itself in a timely fashion, one will be either outright manufactured out of whole cloth (Gulf of Tonkin), or maneuvered to by aggressive, belligerent foreign policy (Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor).
Saying that "the threats as perceived at the time turn out to be less dangerous than judged by the people involved, but this is seldom seen at the moment and the passage of time allows for historical and objective analysis to offer up its judgment" is just a way of saying that those in the warfare state will portray threats in as dire a light as they possibly can because it serves them to do so. If after long observation we saw that a particular poker player made ongoing and continuous miscalculations we would not make apologies and excuses for his poor play. Indeed, those in the warfare state know exactly what game they are playing, and their long term positive results (from their point of view) show that they play it extremely well.
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