Iraq war causing American insanity?

I sometimes wonder if Americans are going crazy due to the Iraq war. About a month ago I had a meeting to do some work for a natural history museum in Stuttgart. The work entailed writing five case studies that would explain the usefulness of taxonomy in very concrete ways. One of the participants was an American working for the Smithsonian. One of the subjects he proposed was "taxonomy and war." He spoke of how taxonomy was used once during WWII to pinpoint the exact location of a German U-boat base that was then bombed. I remained totally reticent at this suggestion and chose not to write about this topic, thinking that it was absolutely crazy. Let's militarize the pursuit of science as a way to show how important it can be.

Then, last week I had the opportunity to watch CNN. There was a brief program that talked of "America getting ready" and the commentator spoke of how Americans had to get used to fighting a perpetual war on terror. He equated terrorist groups with the flu. They just all of a sudden pop up somewhere and then have to be dealt with. This was one of the most ahistorical analyses I have been confronted with in a long time. It was so totally idiotic that it cannot be taken seriously. I wonder though if this thinking is becoming common currency in American culture at the moment.