What does Naipaul conjure up for you? Conrad and Kurtz? Recently, I remember Martin Amis mentioning Naipaul after 9.11, but before he won the Nobel: http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,553638,00.html
"A utopian example: the crippled and benighted people of Afghanistan, hunkering down for a winter of famine, should not be bombarded with cruise missiles; they should be bombarded with consignments of food, firmly marked LENDLEASE - USA. More realistically, unless Pakistan can actually deliver Bin Laden, the American retaliation is almost sure to become elephantine. Then terror from above will replenish the source of all terror from below: unhealed wounds. This is the familiar cycle so well caught by the matter, and the title, of VS Naipaul's story, Tell Me Who to Kill."
The U.S. was kicked off the UN committees on Human Rights and anti-drugs coordination and Annan didn't prevent it. I would agree these are small potatos, but if the UN wasn't a brake on US imperialism, why would the right-wing "national sovereignty" people like Jesse Helms hate it so much? They irrationally believe that the UN doesn't further or mask US imperialism and unilateralism? No one seemed to notice, but after 9.11 Congress paid the U.S.'s back dues. The ruling class realized that they'll have to coordinate their imperialism with other countries' rather than going it alone as a rogue state which was W.'s original intention.
Peter