>harles: When you raised this , what popped into my mind was Bush
>saying he would get Bin Laden Dead or Alive. Here it is a year and
>a half later and they have failed to do that, but the American
>peanut gallery doesn't care/remember. Their attention span , memory
>, reasoning is similar to that of a three year old.
People are encouraged to act that way. But they also tell pollsters that they're still worried about al Qaeda, and more than a few worry that going after Iraq will make things worse. Of course, Perry Anderson says AQ is little more than a "pinprick" <http://www.counterpunch.org/anderson03082003.html>.
That's a strange article by Anderson, by the way. He argues that the Iraq mobilization isn't that special - that it's entirely in line with previous U.S. adventures, and wonders why this one has generated such a massive oppositional movement, unlike its predecents. He isn't at all thrilled by it, though, since it misunderstands everything and is motivated in no small part by a cultural distaste for the Bush admin (as if a cultural distaste for theocratic maniacs weren't a good thing). No doubt this has something to do with Anderson's mandarin detachment I mentioned the other week.
Doug