"This new approach has made the world less safe than it was during the Cold War..." Yes, but it's good.

...the grandiose aim of enlarging democracy by force around the world and preventing mass starvation and ethnic genocide by spilling more blood.

Another bright light.

You said:

"The Holy War ends when every people enjoys the liberty that God granted them a right to."

There is a book that Muslims read, that doesn't share your outlook of the future.

Allen:

Sure it does. Where there's conflict with our values we'll just rewrite their book.

You'll need a big "eraser".

We've erased bigger.

Those billion-plus folks in China are putting together a pretty big eraser. I guess by oj's reckoning it'll be ok if they use that big eraser to rewrite our book (probably with Muslim help, by the way), since they'll have the biggest eraser.

apc's notion that a billion Chinese constitute a "big eraser" calls to mind something one of my professors said back in the 60's about the geopolitical weight of Chins; "we're not fighting with pitchforks, you know."

Numbers are a hinderance now. More numbers mean greater dependence on logistic systems vulnerable to precision attack.

Technology not just trumps numbers--it did that at Obdurman when the Maxim guns shattered the fuzzy-wuzzies. Now technology reverses numbers from a capability into a limitation.

I am afraid those of us who pine for the fall of the West will have to wait for more than mere numbers. The great issues of the coming times will not be decided by majority votes, but by blood and technologies yet to be seen.

Of course, as has been pointed out on this blog, there in fact is less war now than in the past. And it's more efficient -- compare the cost-benefit ratio of Operation Iraqi Freedom to the Iran-Iraq war.

RE: the Chinese threat. Tom Clancy had the best one-line analysis of the Cold War: "I don't sweat the Russians. They don't teach their people to think." Do the Red Chinese?

apc:

The Chinese have nothing. They'll be what we want them to be, not vice versa.

once the middle east goes democratic its peoples will either fall away from islam or convert to chritianity. like all such brittle constructs, islam can not exist where a free choice is allowed. how many people in russia are still communists ?

Wait a second. You're not fooling me!! No way you're Noam Chomsky.

The Chinese aren't exactly operating with pitchforks, either, and they're catching up technologically. In any case, the point I was trying to make was about the small-mindedness of the idea that it's our right to impose our "book" on the rest of the world.

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Albert Einstein

apc: So which of the world's peoples are not endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Or, to put it another way, how is it broad-minded to leave billions languishing in tyrrany?

christmas is the thin end of the wedge, christianity is growing by leaps and bounds there and that's while the government is trying like hell to supress it. keep in mind that the wot terror is strictly an arrabs vs all others war, and arabs are the bottom of the barrel in every way.

apc, you and Liu and your crowd still don't understand Americans. We keep telling you and telling you and telling you...we keep showing you and showing you....and you STILL refuse to see the simple fact that is in front of your face.

Americans don't particularly care about other countries, nor do we have any strong desire to force our values or our political/economic system on other peoples. In general, we offer them good will and a mild hope that they adopt many of our ways which have been well shown to lead to peace & prosperity. But if they choose to not, we don't mind--we believe that everybody has the freedom to go to hell in their own way, if that's their wish.

UP UNTIL THEY START KILLING AMERICANS.

That's why we took out Saddam and not France. Neither are/were friendly to us, but France didn't attack us nor openly & directly help & support people who do.

We can & will ignore the wasps that are merely buzzing around the garden---but when one stings our kid, the gloves come off and we take out the nest.

apc: Einstein was right -- until the Israelis responded with helicopter gun ships.

What fred said.

Now that everyone pretty much agrees that OJ's a leftist, I need a new hobby horse. I think that it's going to be the war over American exceptionalism. It's a war that conservatives are getting into late, because we didn't realize that there was any question. Now it seems that the American left and some foreigners (!) want to argue that the US is just another country and the Democrats are starting to listen. For a start, everyone needs to commit fred's comment to memory. We are not just another country.

Einstein was wrong, we are in WWIV.

apc:

Hardly small-minded to force on them a system that requires they be treated with God-given dignity and rights that precede the state.