After much anticipation, the election is finally over. Now the real work of changing the government can begin.

The completed elections will give the proper air of legitimacy for the broad, sweeping changes that are about to affect the entire country.

No, I’m not talking about Iraq. I’m talking about America and President Bush’s new war against the federal government.

It is clear now that the Bush administration will rely on the same tactics it used to convince the American public to go to war in Iraq to convince Americans to launch an attack on that entity ultra-conservatives hate the most: Social Security.

Just like the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, the administration’s war on Social Security does not, and will never have, the prosperity of the American worker as its sole concern.

The main goal of a rush to war is to convince people a dire threat hangs just above their heads, ready to drop like a proverbial atomic bomb. For Iraq, the public had to believe that Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction. In the case for changing Social Security (which relies on distant, pessimistic economic models, much like the case for war with Iraq relied on questionable intelligence), the public must be made to think Social Security is in a “crisis.” These tactics are plain to see in Bush’s speeches — like his State of the Union address Wednesday — and in his tour to plug his Social Security plan. His claims have already been attacked by economists as “fearmongering.”

The important thing to note in Bush’s speeches and stumping both in the lead up to the Iraq war and in his Social Security push is that the threat is made pressing above other, more real concerns.

In the case of Iraq, Americans had to believe that country was the most threatening power in the world, even in the face of North Korea and Iran’s nuclear programs. The implicit concern was that terrorists could get their hands on weapons of mass destruction and threaten the security of Americans. In the case of Social Security, Americans are being told that the system is the greatest domestic economic concern, even in the face of vast problems with Medicare, rising health care costs and the anemic state of the dollar.

Another important aspect is that the very same people spreading the fear of these threats had a hand in creating the threats. The small, real threats posed by Saddam and Social Security were made worse by people directly involved in the administration. In Iraq, it was the way the conservatives befriended Saddam against Iran in the 1980s by giving him weapons. Likewise, in order to pay for Bush’s tax cut that largely benefited millionaires, the administration had to raid the Social Security Trust Fund, now the subject of much concern. Ultra-conservatives are responsible for both the problems and the solutions. How convenient!

The apparent solution for fixing the Social Security crisis is to divert all government forces away from real pressing economic concerns and tell the American people that what the federal government has really needed all these years was some corporate involvement. This is strange, since the system itself, as part of the New Deal, was designed to float above the turbulent waves of the economy that caused the Great Depression in the first place. Americans are being frightened by the prospect of not earning a decent return from their investment into Social Security, even though the system was only ever designed to keep the non-working elderly out of poverty and not to make money.

This plan to subject the protected Social Security funds to the pitfalls of the economy they were meant as a buffer against for seniors makes about as much sense as fighting the spread of weapons of mass destruction by starting a war. But just as the Iraq invasion had nothing to do with American security, the plan for privatizing Social Security is merely the start of a government regime change, moving the power from people and giving it to multinational corporations.