The Push for War
Anatol Lieven considers what the US Administration hopes to gain

Twice now in the past decade, the overwhelming military and economic dominance of the US has given it the chance to lead the rest of the world by example and consensus. It could have adopted (and to a very limited degree under Clinton did adopt) a strategy in which this dominance would be softened and legitimised by economic and ecological generosity and responsibility, by geopolitical restraint, and by 'a decent respect to the opinion of mankind', as the US Declaration of Independence has it. The first occasion was the collapse of the Soviet superpower enemy and of Communism as an ideology. The second was the threat displayed by al-Qaida. Both chances have been lost - the first in part, the second it seems conclusively. What we see now is the tragedy of a great country, with noble impulses, successful institutions, magnificent historical achievements and immense energies, which has become a menace to itself and to mankind.
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White House Spins Out on an Axis of Evil

Trade, aid, tourism and pirated Hollywood movies are the proven weapons of mass destruction against totalitarianism, much more effective than sanctions and war, which only enshrine dictators and terrorists as the protectors of a people or nation's virtue. Inviting it to the table is still the best weapon for stuffing a mouse that roars.
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Lessons of nation-building
What can our occupation of post-World War II Japan teach us about Iraq?

THE FOCUS ON Japan stems partly from the difficulties of stabilizing post-Taliban Afghanistan. A heavy American hand in Iraq, it’s hoped, might prevent the sort of in-fighting and power-jockeying that has beset President Hamid Karzai and his countrymen. Yet if officials are looking to post-World War II Japan for pointers on running the Saddam-less pit of postwar Iraq, they should study not just the similarities between the two situations but also the signal differences.
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West Overestimates al-Qaida's Reach

Osama bin Laden has become the modern version, the evil twin, of the Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy's rescuer of French aristocrats from the guillotine. Lately, not a bomb explodes without it being blamed on bin Laden's al-Qaida organization. In recent weeks, Washington has accused al-Qaida of an attack on a French tanker, the killing of a U.S. Marine in Kuwait and the frightful bombing of a Bali discotheque.

Given these alarms, one would imagine al-Qaida to be a vast, octopoid organization whose tentacles span five continents. But this view, heavily promoted by the Bush administration and the U.S. media, is as wrong as George Bush's claim that terrorists are "on the run."
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