by Eric Hobsbawm

Guardian [UK]

01/22/05

The address does not so much as mention the words Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror, he and his supporters continue to engage in a planned reordering of the world. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are but one part of a supposedly universal effort to create world order by 'spreading democracy.' This idea is not merely quixotic -- it is dangerous. The rhetoric implies that democracy is applicable in a standardised (western) form, that it can succeed everywhere, that it can remedy today's transnational dilemmas, and that it can bring peace, rather than sow disorder. It cannot...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1396038,00.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp