Why we are losing the war
In the wake of Mombasa, Foreign Affairs Editor Peter Beaumont argues that the atrocities will continue until the West finally grasps the fact that we are fighting a lethal idea rather than a tangible enemy

It is the great heresy of free societies, so speak it softly, but the accumulating evidence of the past four years is that terrorism can - and does - work. And it is working on a global scale.

It is a simple fact that is more terrifying than any of attacks themselves - 11 September included. That a tiny group of extremists, for the most part using the most basic of technologies, could effect such a startling paradigm shift that has transformed the world we live in. But to what end? The answer is more surprising than our political classes appear yet to have grasped.
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The undeclared war
Why Kenya takes last week's terrorist attacks as evidence of war -- waged by the United States
by Geov Parrish

Indicative of what's at stake is the reaction to the attacks by Kenyan's leading Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ali Shee, chairman of the Council of Imams. While unequivocally condemning the attack -- and forcefully denying, in response to the allegations of a French intelligence newsletter, that he was aware of or helped in its planning -- Sheikh Shee warned off Israeli and American tourists from coming to Kenya, saying, "There is an undeclared war between their countries and the Muslim world. It is not good for them to come until the [Palestinian] problem is solved." He also vowed to refuse any cooperation with Israeli or American investigators from Mossad or the FBI: "We will never cooperate with these people... They are criminals. This Bush is the worst leader ever. He is a man of war."
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Ariel Sharon Has Walked Into a Trap.
And We Are Following Him
by Robert Fisk

With utter predictability, Ariel Sharon walked into the al-Qa'ida trap. He vowed "revenge". Thus any strike against the al-Qa'ida – by America, by Britain, by Australia – will be seen as an Israeli attack. America and Britain and Israel are now fighting on the same side. In the short term – and in his mendacious attempt to link Yasser Arafat with Mr bin Laden – Mr Sharon may have gained some advantage. At last, Israel's war on Palestinian "terror" can be placed on the same footing as its new war against al-Qa'ida. No longer will Mr Sharon's ghastly spokesmen have to justify their army's brutality towards Palestinians. Israel is fighting the same struggle of "good against evil" that President Bush invented for us just over a year ago.

But for Israelis, there is one big error in all this. By responding to al-Qa'ida's wicked assault on its civilians, it is taking on a mighty big opponent. For Mr bin Laden's men are not the hopeless suiciders that the Palestinians produce from their foetid refugee camps. The Afghanistan-trained men of Mr bin Laden's legion do not spring from the squalor of Gaza or the occupied masses of the West Bank. They are ruthless, highly motivated, intelligent – just for once, William Safire was right when he called them "vicious warriors" – and they may be more than a match for Israel's third- rate intelligence men. Israel's rabble of an army can kill child stone-throwers with ease. Al-Qa'ida is a quite different opponent. And if Mr Sharon wants to take on Mr bin Laden, he is ensuring that Israel goes to war with its most dangerous enemy in 54 years. Better by far to let the Americans tackle al-Qa'ida – and even they don't seem to be all that successful – than bring Israel into the battle.
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Beyond Regime Change
The administration doesn't simply want to oust Saddam Hussein. It wants to redraw the Mideast map.

The new map would be drawn with an eye to two main objectives: controlling the flow of oil and ensuring Israel's continued regional military superiority. The plan is, in its way, as ambitious as the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement between the empires of Britain and France, which carved up the region at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The neo-imperial vision, which can be ascertained from the writings of key administration figures and their co-visionaries in influential conservative think tanks, includes not only regime change in Iraq but control of Iraqi oil, a possible end to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and newly compliant governments in Syria and Iran -- either by force or internal rebellion.
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thanks to Politics in the Zeros