George Orwell published his novel, “1984” around 1948, after World War II. In it he predicted that war would be continual, that Oceania (the United States and United Kingdom) would find it necessary to maintain a state of war in order to accomplish a number of goals.

First, to keep its population in line by fostering a subtle but invasive paranoia, much as the fear of terrorists our present administration has promoted since Sept. 11 to stifle dissent and manipulate the American public.

John Foster Dulles wrote: “In order to bring a nation to support the burdens of great military establishments, it is necessary to create an emotional state akin to psychology. There must be the portrayal of external menace. This involves the development of a nation-hero, nation villain ideology and the arousing of the population to a sense of sacrifice.”

This induced paranoia was very effective in the elections of 2000 and 2004 but had lost much of its persuasiveness by the 2006 midterm election.

Second, Oceania must maintain a wartime economy in order to support what President Eisenhower referred to as the “military-industrial complex.” By directing much of the nation’s production into military hardware and supplies it could, as Orwell wrote, “keep the wheels of industry turning” which also allows for untold war profiteering. “[T]he search for new weapons continues unceasingly” he wrote, and we must “continue to produce atomic bombs and store them up.”

Third, any actual fighting shall only occur in “vague frontiers,” third-world countries, our getting involved is only in order to give the country back to the people. Actually we could not care less about those people and their living conditions, for once we moved on to another “vague frontier” this one would be left devastated, with many of its people dead or homeless and its economy in shambles. These wars would continue to pop up around the world from one third-world nation to another, very much as reported on Oceania’s telescreen news reports from the Ministry of Peace.

A look at the list of U.S. confrontations just since Orwell’s novel was published in 1948 will demonstrate how accurate his prediction was. Cold War: 1945-91; Korean War: 1950-53; Vietnam War: 1956-75; Lebanon: 1958; Dominican Republic: 1965; Iran: 1980; Libya: 1981-86; Lebanon: 1982-84; Grenada: 1983; Panama: 1989; Kuwait: 1991; Iraq: 1991; Somalia: 1992-94; Bosnia: 1994-95; Haiti: 1994; Afghanistan: 1998; Sudan: 1998; Iraq: 1998; Kosovo: 1999; Afghanistan: 2001 to present; Iraq: 2003 to present; Haiti: 2004.

Some confrontations would drag on for years with high expenditures of men and materials as occurred in Vietnam, with Oceania’s telescreen relating body counts, the “gory description of the annihilation … with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners” and always forecasting that they could see light at the end of the tunnel. “We are now reporting this may well bring the war within measurable distance of its end.”

Yet deep down we all know that there is no end to continual war. But with the mind’s ability to doublethink the news report gives us hope that good is winning out over evil.

George F. Will once wrote that it makes us feel good about our “messianic impulse” to “further democracy.” Our intrusions into these third-world nations,” he explains, are really an “act of neighborliness … a tradition with a distinguished pedigree.”

Lt. Col. Oliver North provided an excellent example of this form of doublethink in his confrontation with a congressional investigating committee. His expression of love for the ideals that America stands for brought tears ands a lump in the throat to the most hardened audience, yet his arguments for subverting those ideals in order to protect the country’s “national security interests” made America stand up and cheer. North stated that the activities he performed and the consequent legal charges against him were “not a brand” but were “a badge of honor.”

Orwell referred to this as the “labyrinthine world of doublethink … to believe that democracy was impossible, and that the party was the guardian of democracy.”

Halliburton and all the other corporations that are benefiting financially from our involvement in Iraq, or any other war that we engage in, would profess to believe in those ideals. But in their minds they are only ideals, not unquestioned rules to live by like driving on the right or wearing clothes in public.

So, sincerely believing in the ideals that we, as a nation, profess is not the same as actually living by them. Americans will sacrifice their lives and their children’s when necessary to defend those ideals. Yet at the same time they believe their ideals are impractical in dealing with the complexities of today’s world, both on the individual and international level.

So today, with our, perhaps unwitting, compliance, our constitution is being slowly shredded by our administration. Our civil rights, as provided for by that document, are being eroded, and our standing in the world has been trashed by our arrogantly invading another country under false pretenses and refusing to admit that it was a tragic mistake. We should be offering apologies, and reparations, but no, we’re now preparing to invade another nation.

The United States still has the potential to become the grand democracy that so many of us envision. But there are so many recurrences of the same errors, so many times when doublethink wins out over reason and truth, and when personal, corporate and national greed has torn the fabric of our society. Our founding fathers, upon instituting this experiment in democracy, saw our role as setting an example for the world, not in dominating it for our own selfish purposes. We must attempt to live by the ideals that we profess and within the constitutional framework that we claim to cherish.

Eliot J. Chandler lives in Presque Isle.