Weren't some people commenting a couple years ago about how the Lord of the Rings trilogy was somehow pro-Bush, or anti-terror or something (we have to band together and resist evil, no matter the cost, etc.). I don't know if that, too, was a case of reading too much into things...
But perhaps Lucas wanted the liberal counterpart to the more militaristic, realpolitik message from LOTR?
I don't know about Lord of the Rings being pro-Bush, but it is clearly an affront to our modern-day, PC, diversity-worshipping, multicultural-loving dictates.
There was a review at some leftwing 'diverstiy' website that purported to claim that the atrocious Matrix sequels were better than Lord of the Rings because, well, they embraced and celebrated diversity, whereas the Lord of the Rings -- basically a mythic and fictional pre-history of Europe -- had the gall to actually cast it as such, and eschew ridiculous diversity casting for diversity's sake, and avoid (for the most part) peppering it with other nods to liberal modernity.
The review, and the resulting editorial discussion on the website is both hilarious for its absurdity, and frightening in that people actually think like that.
Its at;
http://tolerance.org/news/article_tol.jsp?id=932