> And sure the UN or some client state could bring bin Laden and Al
> Qaeda to the Hague for the US as a proxy, but this is a little
> unseemly for Empire, don't you think?
What evidence do you have that the US is a hegemonic, all-powerful, almighty Empire? Multinational capitalism is a radically different beast from the Pax Americana of the 1950s, or the Fax Americana of the 1980s. Powell is not a fool, and knows quite well that bombs will solve nothing, only some sort of long-term multinational political intervention can do that. That's why he's been shuttling non-stop across the world, while King George II gawks at Shanghai shopping malls.
It's funny how times have changed. In the 1960s Mao built these Potemkin villages for the benefit of Western visitors, hiding China's desperate poverty with a display of revolutionary face; nowadays, East Asia hosts gala events for Potemkin Presidents, who are there to recreate the illusion of a US hegemony which vanished long ago.
-- Dennis