Re: Fw: [osint] Reflections On 'Containment'

I usually find Bruce Cumings to be among those who overrate US prospects in the 
world, but the paragraph below seems perfect (my 'first thoughts' on 9/11 too). 
 For a more 'realistic' assessment of the world left than that offered by Wagar 
in the last post, see Wallerstein's current commentary.  I have to say, 
considering that something like a 'world party' is now emerging (allowing for 
the inevitable differences in organization, the result of communication and 
consciousness transformations that have made bureaucratic structures seem a lot 
less modern than they used to), he seems awfully gloomy.

Steve Sherman

"The first thought that struck me after witnessing (on television) thousands of 
casualties resulting from an attack on the mainland, for the first time since 
1812, was that over the long haul the American people may exercise their 
longstanding tendency to withdraw from a world deemed recalcitrant to their 
ministering and present Washington with a much different and eminently more 
difficult dilemma than the here-today, gone-tomorrow axis of evil: how to rally 
the citizens for a long twilight struggle to maintain an ill-understood 
American hegemony in a vastly changed world"