"Yet this is staring us in the face. Iraq: could the world have conceived, in 1947, that US troops could not hold Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich? That American leaders could only sneak into Germany on furtive, unscheduled peek-a-boo missions? That the American occupation officials, hardly daring to emerge from their fortified ghetto, could not control most of Berlin? Afghanistan: could anyone have imagined an America as feckless in its response to Pearl Harbor as to the even greater humiliation is suffered on September 11th? The very country that was supposed to feel the full weight of American wrath now houses a puppet semi-government which cannot even control its own capital, and a scattering of American troops bring no results other than their own occasional deaths. The United States has fallen far. The inability to see the significance of the change is almost as spectacular as the change itself."
From "Three Years and Counting? How Time Flies" by Michael Neumann
Much has been written about the decline of America, the perils of imperial pursuits and the unsustainability of empire. But this article by Michael Neumann puts what many people have tried to say in sharper and clearer focus than any others I've seen. An outstanding review. Scintillating!
The prescription with which Neumann ends his article (dump Israel) is too specific for the large questions he raises, but does point to America's marked lack of any instinct of self-preservation.
A must read. I thought Pat Buchanan had best articulated this viewpoint so far, but Neumann has delivered a short tour de force.
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