Nationalism: A feigned necessity?

Throughout history leaders have taken advantage of Nationalism to rally the people into doing things that they would normally stray away from doing. Which leads me to wonder, is nationalism just a tool exploited by leaders to exploit us?

I'll give an exmaple of what I mean. September 11th is the most obvious though by no means the only example, but it does the trick either way. 9/11 was a horrific event that reshaped the course of American history. Following "a day that will live in Infamy" we've entered into a war on terrorism which brought us to Iraq and Afghanistan. Everyone seems to have forgotten, but support for both of those wars was absolutely overhwhelming. Even on the night of 9/11 people were crying for military action. I'm actually proud of the Bush administration for showing restraint in the face of that kind of stress. The nationalism that formed in the 9/11 aftermath to me was great, people came together and just sort of worked things out. Yet there had to be some kind response, cue in the wars. The Afghanistan war was "popular" with the American and people, and more or less we won it, but the Iraq war is a completely different story. Nationalism was used by the Bush administration to rally the people into Iraq, and it worked wonderfully. Later people feel they were conned into it, like they were betrayed by their leaders into a way. People fail to realize is that they were betrayed by their own emotions, and by patriotism, George Bush has the power to move troops, but it was by the will of the people that he moved them. I firmly believe we'd be in Iraq right now whether the phrase WMDs was ever muttered or not. Now that the feelings of patriotism are waning the world is becoming a giant clusterfuck. This example shows the power of nationalism and the downside it usually offers.

It is a widely held notion that America is "The most powerful nation in the world" and everyone seems kind of proud of that and never wants to lose that. This phrase is actually the main reason for this post. When the power of the United States is challenged everyone gets riled up. Everoyne is afraid of what'll happen if we lose that post as most powerful. I am also one who believes we should maintain our power, and I feel feelings of pride just thinking about the idea, but it is this thinking which leads to ethnocentrism and"America: World Police". Then just the other day I was reading "The Serpent Queen", the second book of "The Mallorean" a very enjoyable series of books by David Eddings, and the story is about a question group of individuals trying to recover a King's son, most people in the group are from a different nationality and background, yet they all work seamlessly together. Obviously this is a book and it can be shaped to the Author's will, but there is no sense of nationalism, it's more polarized into a good vs evil type of thing. Then I thought "What if America wasn't the strongest country in the world?" my mind immediately projected images of doom and gloom, but I didn't understand why, and then I realized, we would just be like everyone else. When I go on vacation in the Carribean, Canada, or even Mexico, they aren't living in a dead society fearing for their lives. The lives of the people is unchanged, almost completely unaffected by the intentions of other nations. It is the bickering of governments that makes Nationalism dangerous. Almost everyone is patriotic and thinks that their country is the best, and this makes for a diverse world atmosphere in a good way. It's only when channeled by the government that tempers flare beyond managable domain and people begin to die. It seems like without government's exploiting their people--I'm not pointing fingers or naming names, it is done by everyone government, every leader, and it may even be unavoidable--the world would just have a lot of super-intense soccer matches. Now this assessment is probably a little Utopian, but I feel it holds some weight. It seems if Governments focused on the domestic front, that the world be more secure than it is now.

Now a bit of a disclaimer:
Of course this is the analysis of my mind of the world. I fail to take into many factors such as trade, taxes, the global economy, and the nature of human beings, but it is an interesting point on nationalism, on how it is used to use people. It may or may not be a necessary evil, but I'm not in the position to test it, and if I was I'm not sure I would want to make that drastic a change--that's another thing I've noticed, people absoutely despise change--. Also, this post lacks the focus and clarity of a organized paper, so judge it accordingly.