President Bush has had the 'war' as a crutch for his Presidency that showed up during the Democratic Intafadah following the dubious electoral defeat yet popular win for the former Vice President Al Gore in the year 2000. President Bush has been able to trot out a patriotic speech to select audiences while trimming some domestic civil rights evidently, yet the President has created the appearance of disdain for the civil liberties of ordinary Americans in some instances while extolling or at least supporting the virtue of torture.

Good speech saying can really be quite useful for a President in persuading Americans that he really does support their tradition of strong individual liberty and liberal values (not debauchery of course). In world war One the British government took away nearly all the rights of the citizens when it came to seeking and destroying agents of the triple alliance upon whom they warred, yet Britain eventually regained some of her stature as a lion of democracy (ask the Brits about that). The President's position on the mooning of certain constitutional safeguards in the effort to capture Al Qa'eda symps and supporters that wiretaps without warrant, imprisons without habeas corpus perhaps in hidden foreign second person/nation prisons or holds without term of confinement or trial and so forth as well as select torture might have more credibility amidst more bland followers of his globalist fossil fuel policy if it could pass the reverse polarity test...that is, if the Democrats take control of both houses of congress, and elect another Democratic President too in 2008 such as Mr. Edwards, would the Republican Party be content with the wireless, warrantless wiretaps, tortures, confinements and so forth with the power of the Democratic Party without much darn oversight...or would they and Reich wing talk radio be screaming bloody murder and talking about 'revolution' to establish a new 'contract' on New York/America?

President Bush may just wrap up the Bin Ladin business just before leaving office to eradicate provisions that might let the Democrats wiretap foreign subsidiaries of global oil companies with suspicious contacts in the sundry terrorist sheltering nations. To persuade Americans that he is really a swell guy however, the President might try talking publicly more often about the value of American civil liberties, about the importance of keeping the nation together and without debt, and about the need for secure borders, a leading infrastructure etc. At least an historical awareness of the liberal history that has fought against authoritarianism would be useful in the Presidents own words. If people believed that he actually care much perhaps he could have more trust from those whose future is being outsourced, displaced by cheap immigrant illegals, mortgaged to foreign lenders, and enfiladed economically speaking by the global ability to produce cheaper foreign workers abroad for any new start up company in America that can be instantly outsourced. The brain power to recognize and adapt to new patterns of economics that reduce America's comparative advantage isn't evident in the administration. Without perennial 'wars' the fossil fuel based global economic infrastructure might be enfiladed too as not promoting the nation's best interests.

The philosophical movement named 'consequentialism' is a version of utilitarianism that determines that an act is morally good depending upon its consequence. For instance, the administration's gross neglect of financing levee completion around New Orleans before the flood would be morally evil because the consequences were deaths and loss of property. On the other hand, if the goal was to reduce the population of the City of New Orleans and flood the region with cheap illegal alien workers in order to create prosperity for unspecified others, then the consequences could be narrowly considered to be good in relation to the goal of bettering the income of the beneficiaries. The consequences of prospering some and disadvantaging others is a relational or conditional consequent in which the good is inevitably subjectively determined. Different opinions will form about the good or evil of particular acts, and consequentialism seems thus an inadequate criterion for determining the good in moral philosophy.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

In the recent Federal/C.I.A. choice to have a predator sky robot launch a missile in Pakistan killing maybe 18 innocent people and four 'bad' people, the Presidential administration provided an answer to what their opinion is about the classic proposition of hedonistic utilitarianism 'an act is morally good if and only if it increases the good so far as to outweigh the bad, and if no better choice was available'.

The administration answered the philosophical question--is it morally right to have significant collateral damage (as high as 490%) of killing innocent people outside your electoral district or significant lobbyists turf of origin in order to squash criminal perpetrators difficult to catch otherwise? The administration's answer was of course YES!

Act based utilitarianism holds an act morally right if and only if that act maximizes the good..., if the total amount of good for all minus the total amount of bad for all is greater than this net amount for any incompatible act available to the agent on that occasion. (Cf. Moore 1912, chs. 1-2.) -paraphrased/adapted from ... http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/