> My word, how do you know what script Powell is following?
I just have this bad habit of reading the EU press and following the UN press releases. The US isn't carpet-bombing Kabul, and the special forces have stayed far away from the mountains, thus avoiding a grinding, unwinnable infantry war; they are going after the volunteer forces, though. There's a sort of crude justice in the fact that a bunch of gangsters who were spawned by the US in the first place is getting cut down to size by their creators -- but of course ordinary Afghans are paying an unfathomable price.
Someone said, somewhere, that the Right is always fighting the last war, while the Left is always protesting the last war. At this local "Peace, Justice, Globalization" conference here at the University of Oregon, an activist gave a speech and condemned the bombing and said the UN needs to handle S11 as a multinational crime. Someone got up in the audience and said in response, "I thought this was a peace conference, not a war conference" or words to that effect. To me, this summarizes exactly where the Left is today: we continue to seek heretics to symbolically repudiate, instead of finding allies to network with.
-- Dennis