Interesting Stuff. Jon
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/20/opinion/20GART.html
Excerpt:
The War After War With Iraq
By TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
OXFORD, England
...
So also with the politics. There is something rather new: America feels so confident of its own military power and moral rightness that it will march into the most explosive region in the world with just one effective ally (two if you count Australia). And something very old: the United Nations diplomacy finally came down to a conflict between Europe's oldest adversaries, England and France. Again as at Agincourt in 1415.
Over the last few weeks, the geopolitical West of the cold war has collapsed before our eyes. No one can know what the shape of the new world will be. As Prime Minister Tony Blair said in his magnificent speech to the British Parliament on Tuesday, "History doesn't declare the future to us so plainly." But we can already see three broad ideas competing for the succession to the cold war West. I'll call them the Rumsfeldian, the Chiraco-Putinesque and the Blairite.
The Rumsfeldian idea ? if idea is not too dignified a word ? is that American might is right. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sees the United States as a City on a Hill. As the hyperpower of the free, it must strike back at international terrorism, the new international Communism. It may also end up spreading democracy to places like Iraq, and thus make the world a better place. If some allies want to come along to help, that's fine. If not, you work around them.
The Rumsfeldian vision is half right and therefore all wrong. It's probably true that the United States can now win most wars on its own. But it can't win the peace on its own. And victory in the war against terrorism is all about winning the peace in Iraq, in the wider Middle East, and beyond.
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