I read the International Herald Tribune almost every day. Since the New York Times recently forced the Washington Post to sell its stake in the IHT, the paper no longer carries any Post articles and has become more or less an overseas edition of the New York Times.

I never read the New York Times when we lived in America, so I don't have a handle yet on its editorial line. Anyway, yesterday the paper published a News Analysis article that had some good points about America's effort to remake the Middle East.

"[Some] see the administration heading for an immense failure... the war itself will in a sense preempt the effort at democratization, so infuriating the Arab world that fundamentalism will intensify and spread, along with more terrorism and a bitter, unrelenting hatred of the United States -- not just in the Middle East but in Europe and Asia."

Later in the article someone is quoted as saying, "Looking at the history of the Middle East and the sources of illiberalism and radical Islam, it seems to me that creating an American colony in Iraq will do more to stoke radicalism than to contain it." And another observer comments, "There is a sort of optimism [in Washington] based on ahistorical assumptions and wishful thinking."

The article does, however, end on an optimistic note: "The world today is a better place because Americans have dared to be idealistic... they have been willing to take on big historical projects that others thought were unfeasible."

Previous Entry >>> Buffett's Letter to Shareholders for 2002