The problem is not really, as alleged, our sudden “unilateralism” — much less Mr. Rumsfeld’s supposedly impolitic use of terms like “Old Europe” or the shunning of hurt leaders. After all, the real gaffes and trash-talking in the recent crises mostly emanated from abroad — and in a manner not quite seen before.
The Bush administration was right to question why there are over 35,000 American troops on the DMZ targeted by 10,000 heavy guns — especially as we pay blackmail to neighboring butchers to behave. That strange policy too was the abnormality, not our new efforts to relocate our troops southward, apprise the South Koreans of the risks of their triangulating policies, and inform China, Japan, and South Korea that a nuclear creep was loose in their neighborhood — not ours. Such a past untenable condition called for such a restoration of sanity, and thus for a move back to the mean that was not imprudent, but long overdo.
Well, there’s lot’s more, but you can go read the whole thing here.
Okay, just a little more:
Instead, in the upcoming months — given the fact the new liberators are offering the gift of democracy, while the old murderers are offering more of the same death and mayhem — the attacks will taper off, the story about the Husseins’ whereabouts will unfold, the mystery of the missing WMD will be solved, we will navigate through the uncharted waters of Iraqi reconstruction — and, once more, the present peddlers of gloom will be refuted.
Not So Fast 