The Caliphs are in fine voice in Karbala and Washington. The montage emerging in the wake of the asymmetric victory resembles more a broken Byzantine mosaic than an early American landscape.

 

Scores of self-flagellating, self-gratifying males will add to the tribulations of doctors desperate for clean water and anesthetic. Zealots are becoming the prime movers and about to become rebels in their own land.

 

Pandora’s box now opened will need all the skill and acumen of a united Pentagon and State Department devoted to managing the fallout. That this be done with fairness and justice is a moral imperative, even for the realists.

 

To forestall the emergence of the so called one vote/last vote Islamic extremist parties, a constitution should be drawn up and put to a vote sooner rather than later.

 

It would be better if John Ashcroft was excluded from these deliberations.

 

The burden on the minds and spirits of the Bush administration of the responsibility for the well-being of 24 million people, half of whom are under 16, should be enormous. They knew this going in, of course, and presumably accepted their fate.

 

Glossy busy-screened TV news is losing the credibility game with their print brethren. Willfully disinfected, endlessly banal and repetitive, it very rarely delivers what is needed: news. The triumph of the printed word could be one of the early winners in the new era.

 

Newt Gingrich is another early victor now that he has declared himself Mayor of Baghdad.

 

Sars (severe acute republican silliness) begets SARS and Santorum is but a recent mutation. The virus should not be allowed to turn faddish spanking of the French and others into a fetish. Pragmatism has its uses and National self-interest can be invoked to temper the vindictive, just as National security was invoked to temper the peaceniks.

 

A hallmark of this administration could be the monochrome simplicity it brings to bear on all subjects. On the compassionate Bush carousel if you’re evil, you’re out. If you’re out, you’re immoral. If you’re immoral, you’re a liberal. If you’re a liberal, you can’t be trusted. If you can’t be trusted, you can’t be judicious. If you can’t be judicious, you’re evil…..
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