Any Chance To Get In A Hit

We know that the movers and shakers in Hollywood, by and large, are quite liberal. We know that they hold a deep, festering hatred for conservative values in general, and President Bush in particular. They will take any opportunity to take a shot at the Right, any chance to make President Bush and his supporters look bad. Director George Lucas, talking about the new "Star Wars" release, takes his opportunity...

Lucas, speaking to reporters, emphasised that the original "Star Wars" was written at the end of the Vietnam war, when Richard Nixon was U.S. president, but that the issue being explored was still very much alive today.

"The issue was, how does a democracy turn itself into a dictatorship?" he said.

"When I wrote it, Iraq (the U.S.-led war) didn't exist... but the parallels of what we did in Vietnam and Iraq are unbelievable."

He acknowledged an uncomfortable feeling that the United States was in danger of losing its democratic ideals, like in the movie.

"I didn't think it was going to get this close. I hope this doesn't come true in our country."

Although he didn't mention Bush by name, Lucas took what sounded like another dig while explaining the transformation of the once-good Anakin Skywalker to the very bad Darth Vader.

"Most bad people think they're good people," he said.

That's just lovely, isn't it? He says the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq are "unbelievable." Let's see...

In Vietnam we spent a decade fighting (mostly under two Democratic Presidents) to drive out communist influence in a country that, as a whole, probably couldn't have cared. We left defeated.

In Iraq, we went in under a Republican President and freed an entire nation from a brutal, bloodthirsty dictator in just a matter of days. That nation now has a freely elected democratic government, is on its way to maintaining its own defense, and provides a beacon of hope for freedom in the Middle East. Since the fall of Saddam's regime, the Syrian occupiers of Lebanon have been kicked out, free elections have been promised for the first time in Egypt, and corrupt governments have been replaced by democracies in Ukraine and Georgia. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi even disbanded his WMD programs. Oh, and we also freed millions of Afghans from the tyrannical rule of the Taliban prior to the Iraq War.

Can anyone say apples and oranges?