[Urbane Guerrilla]

Pierce: yep, Sevareid's Law at work -- and it's nowhere stronger than in politics. That's why I specified those worries. Sufficient unto the day, and all that.

HM: and the Administration could have had all that easily -- IF Congress had declared a state of war existed. Nobody in government or out of it really thought a Congressional declaration of war was the right size or kind of government response. So what you're seeing is a wartime Administration stuck with trying it the hard way if it is to do it any way at all.

Queequeg, read up on conspiracist thinking and conspiracist thinkers -- if that study doesn't turn you off the path you're taking, you may be headed for a hopeless condition.

Basically, conspiracist thinkers are frustrated romantics, looking for an explanation of events that is full of high drama. Unfortunately, Occam's Razor cuts conspiracy theory to shreds, for conspiracy theories invariably accrete layers of complexity. They also generally attribute to malice what can be more simply explained by stupidity. People who've been in government employ tend eventually to notice that government agencies really don't have time for plots, given their real responsibilities. This is true even of intelligence agencies, those favorites of conspiracy-theorizers.

Thomas P.M. Barnett contends that this kind of attack on ourselves and on Europe comes out of a resistance to globalization, by persons seeing only a loss -- though these are outnumbered heavily by those who can see the gain. He notes without attempting to analyze or explain that some of the more intense objection to globalization is to be found only within the societies well globalized already -- what he calls the Core nations, the economic core and mainstay for the globe. He is optimistic that successful integration into globalization is more or less inevitable in the long run, but how much conflict and trouble we'd want to tolerate during that long run is rather a sharp question. He reckons globalization integration is powerfully driven by economic, free-trade considerations, and that thus it has a pull like gravity. It's in the Core nation's interest, though, that this integration proceed swiftly, though it must be also recognized that the substantial social changes societies undergo in the process are not going to be hurried beyond a certain point.

Meanwhile, during that long run, our international troubles are likeliest to come from those unglobalized, unintegrated nations he calls the Gap -- for their separation from, and zero effect upon, the global economy and cultural connectivity.

And meanwhile again, I'm in a lot less hurry to quit fighting than the senior leadership of the Democratic Party.