Not that I deem this essay so precious, but hey: some drops of life have been brewed in, so:
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[this is the second and last part of a wider essay]

BACK TO THE FIRST PART

Alexis de Tocqueville: he's the frenchman that in 1835 predicted, in one amazing chapter of his best known book Democracy in America, the cold war between Usa and Russia as a phenomenon due to appear within his following century.
Period & ponder. A lot.

Somewhere, lost in the wilderness of the drawers where political parties set aside valuable political analysis that raised some formal respect and none the less were dysfunctional enough to the mainstream policy that calls for permanent cheating and not for conceptual efforts which as such are often commissioned as merely cosmetical a frippery, there should still be my 1991 work "Analysis of the perspectives in the relationships between islamic countries and the west after the Gulf War", in 70 tight pages.
The entire core of that work was a strong advocacy of democracy building in Iraq soon after the ousting of Hussein.
But there is something that today, ten years after that prognostication, makes us all less optimistic.

I know that there is an ongoing stream of (lack of) thought that despises the very same democracies the despiser enjoys and exploits to the dregs; after all mankind evolves itself, would you guess otherwise? and I assume that when Aristotle distinguished between Tyranny, Oligarchy, and Democracy and Rousseau regarded the last one as divine, he did so for he wasn't but a windbag; and that his Ethics and Politics, along with Tocqueville's Democracy in America should be trashed to give way to our more up to date and escalating progressions: No Logo.

You can export a revolution, like Napoleon tried to export the french revolution.
But I'm less optimistic you can export democracy planting it in a ground which has been irrigated for too long with shattered self esteem and where sultanism thrived undisturbed for centuries: when autocracy is left alone for centuries, it destroys a country's future by eradicating its roots forever; upheavals, if any, are populistic and namely simply meant to swap a destitution with another, relentlessly.
Rousseau was thus somewhat quite right: there is something divine in democracy indeed: it is not something you can lend.
Democracies Don't Fight Democracies
Does democracy cause peace?

I'm going to explain to you it all.

«Because that country is trying to get fissile material when North Korea already has it? And why is the Bush administration willing to risk an Armageddon in the Middle East by taking preemptive military action against Iraq when it is not willing to do the same in Northeast Asia? The answer to all these questions is that our policy toward Iraq is emotional, not logical. » [source]

The author of this article attains this conclusion after a long string of observations, all of them quite correct, even exemplar.
It is thus surprising that so well crafted observations led to a close which profiles an unconditional surrender to irrationality as its outcome, after so many analytical steps apparently due to enter a triumphant likewise logical entailment. The author simply gives up logics where the snarl seems too intricate for his intellect to discriminate safely any longer.

It is certainly pointless to boast the presumptive virtues of analytical depth and insight, when the eventual shore you end up at, is an outright abdication of the analytical vigor you so brilliantly set off with.

Even more certainly, analysis should precede the outcome and determine it, and it should not be the desired outcome that shapes the analysis, slashing it with its slants.
Analysis is not compatible with a dominant need or assumption. If you undertake it, either you appropriately consummate it to perfection, or you'd better abstain as soon as you sense impotency, or you may well waste all the done job.

When the no globals interpret everything as something that invariably calls for interpretation, and consequently never hesitate to provide it with theirs, regardless of what it is, as oil or whatever incarnation of material interest they are pleased to vest it with, they're making a display of no analytical power at all: in fact, what analytical power can you validly claim in the speech which is so slavishly borrowed by the already full fledged theory conceived by another? In fact replication is the opposite of analysis, and all these theories aren't but the subservient reproduction and reproposal of the so called historical materialism, by Karl Marx.

Theirs is a marxist historical materialism without Marx, or in other words the vulgata of the historical materialism: an impoverished, depleted version, brandished by men who never even read the pamphlet, so we could really say that to them perfectly suits what Karl Marx himself said of history in another book: «History always recurs twice, the first time as a Drama and the second time as a Comedy».
Withdraw apart in awe and pave way to the banality of the abyssal: «a sublime abort cometh» [Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil]: they know nothing, but they interpret all.

If they would have at least read Marx...: but as you see, Albert Camus was right: «First comes the conversion, later you read the founding fathers».
At times you even don't read them at all. For the fact that the conversion antecedes the arguments, proves the unsubstantiality of the exhibited analytical element.

Arguments assist at a second time, like useful weaponry unexpectedly found at disposal on the spot, glittering debris washed ashore by the ebbing tide, picked like the lucky strike of a scavenger, and therefore all the arguments entirely dismissed their original analytical nature to don the convenient role of tailored hats, believed theorems in which you have a faith, narcissistically and squalidly liable and bound to be turned into tools functional to comfort and to wheedle a prejudice of yours, riped elsewhere.
Ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis, scientists say; but personal biographic delusion doesn't automatically account for social history.
And, surely, entirely self sufficient arguments can yield self fulfilling prophecies.

It is the same attitude which is sported towards the palestinians: everybody who declares himself deeply concerned with their situation, lends them money for more blood and for more victims; but no one who declares himself honestly concerned with their cause lends them money for a set of modern plough or to send 100,000 young palestinians to the universities. Conversely, they invariably have the money to send the same kids to the training camps or to a gruesome death devotedly pursued.

When such situations or some leaders are referred to as «vicious», it is not just and merely propagandistic a lexicon, neither it is an insult: in fact it is etymologically "vicious" what is self referential, so that the arguments aren't actually an avenue to the conclusions, but a byproduct of the conclusions themselves.

A typically self referential argument is the one accordingly to which if you do not respond to an attack you're reckoned inherently weak; and if you respond, you're regarded as an unprovoked attacker and you justify the original idea to attack you.
Let's read the following excerpt drawn by what I deem a fascinating milestone everybody should carefully read: the Declaration of war on the West:

«We say to the Defense Secretary that his talk can induce a grieving mother to laughter! and shows the fears that had enshrined you all. Where was this false courage of yours when the explosion in Beirut took place on 1983 AD (1403 A.H). You were turned into scattered pits and pieces at that time; 241 mainly marines solders were killed. And where was this courage of yours when two explosions made you to leave Aden in lees than twenty four hours!
But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia; where- after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post cold war leadership of the new world order- you moved tens of thousands of international force, including twenty eight thousands American solders into Somalia. However, when tens of your solders were killed in minor battles and one American Pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you.
Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge , but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear. It was a pleasure for the heart of every Muslim and a remedy to the chests of believing nations to see you defeated in the three Islamic cities of Beirut , Aden and Mogadishu.»

Now, these arguments (let aside this strange sort of unusual measurement of international prestige achievability by the amount of the pieces: cannot an alternative be lent?) leave no way out: the author -Laden I think- seems to assume an invasion also where there is none (if you cannot give peace to Somalia, why insisting? That's not an invasion meant to endure with a standing army in any way), and if after several attacks you do not retaliate showing what Colin Powell admired in Thucydides «The greatest display of power is restraint», why interpreting it as a symptom of weakness and therefore an incitement to even more violence instead than as a hint to a different approach? It is like the sentence reported by a great expert of the arab world, the frenchman Bruno Etienne:

«[when] I finished reading his fine work on the sakina, I told him it was interesting but somewhat false or un accurate (...) I attempted to explain to him my agnosticism in that regard, but to no avail because for him despite our friendship I still was but a christian (...) [he said:] If you respect Islam, it is either because you're uncertain of your own faith or because the influx of our religion dominates you.»

With such arguments there is no solution out, that's a blind alley you're sticking all the protagonists in, and all ways and bridges appear having been cut beforehand at the very onset.
Neither the Usa retaliate after the attacks to Kenya and Tanzania nor they did after the attack to the Cole: the Afghan regime had been left ruling the country as it wished best, quite undisturbed.
But if you arrange something like 9/11, namely you hit a democracy in what it most values and draws its legitimacy from, unarmed civilians, and this time you finally trigger a massive intervention, why casting this as an aggression now? It clearly proves the logics is a logics envisioning a permanent escalation, in the face of which deals are either impossible or a mere truce simply foreboding for further escalation. I see that an arab legacy may be algebraic, but this really calls for a stop, for that road to progression leads to extinction of mankind: and not by american hands, for when they showed great restraint for over a decade, they have been perceived, so it seems, ludicrous.

These arguments, honestly, leave no way out. This is why I say that also the no global are functional to dictatorship when they sit mum when the Usa show restraint, they sit even more mum when other countries perform evil deeds, only to turn up with overheated agitation as soon as the Usa eventually intervene.
And the "bravery" of the no globals before Mc Donalds windows entirely fades before something else, for intransigency is only for the Macs but appeasement is bountifully bestowed to all the rest, with urgency:

«Prime Minister John Howard was yesterday forced to confront growing anger among Australians that they are being exposed to terrorist attacks by his government's strident support for America's war on terror.
Prime Minister Howard called a press conference at midday to label people who accused him of responsibility for the attacks as 'plain wrong'.
He said: 'Terrorists murdered Australians in Bali. This idea - that you purchase immunity from attack by saying nothing - is morally bankrupt, before being unaccurate.'» [source]

How do these guys envision the world with alternative empires other than the Usa?
Undoubtedly,

«(...) if peace were the ultimate goal of statecraft, then the solution to the problem of peaceful changes would be easy. Peace may always be had by [unconditional] surrender to the aggressor» [Robert Giplin, War and Change in World Politics]

Do they really deem that after an hypothetical collapse of the Usa, their own country (Australia in this case, but we could have mentioned other ones as well) would be able to withstand and antagonize the orders issued to them by fundamentalists whenever they'd find delivering to them an order either fanciful or useful for further aims? However, certainly in one sense by then they would have acquired immunity from attacks, and at a cheap prize indeed: in the sense they would be so utterly and definitely frightened, it won't even be necessary to issue an order whatsoever any longer: a look will suffice, a hint would be enough to call them to attention like a solicitous herd gathering with dismal gaze and staggering gait. They won't utter "no" again.

For terrorism is not a request, but a ransom; neither it is a war, let aside an arrangement: it is an extortion.
[It is somewhat thrilling to find as soon as 10 days after I wrote that statement, that precisely the very same perception has been felt as high as inside the Kremlin: it is a fine corroboration of some real analytical -say- prowess: "Russia will never make any deals with terrorists and will never give in to blackmail."]

This is precisely the "vicious" element which characterizes the current 21sth century challenge, and the whole of this challenge, the whole of the picture it is framed in, is characterized by these continuous logical short-circuitings, whose sparks are the bombs.
Terrorism becomes blackmailing, and terrorism cannot be de-terred by definition.
Therefore the paramount paradigm that granted perpetual peace to Europe and Usa and Russia for over 60 years -deterrence, that is- has to be redefined and substituted on the run.
As soon as deterrence is questioned, exactly what deterrence granted is put at stake with the question; and no matter how much young generations born and grown in the lull of this perpetual peace may assume this peace represents the normality descended upon them by its own virtue or by divine grace. They are all liable to the most brutal awakening, and none the less they don't understand: they even suggest to turn the head the other side.

Like all blackmailing, the coercitive nature of the "proposal" is such, that once fulfilled what can guarantee that the blackmailer would not resort to it again and again, repeatedly once successful, driven by the most opportunistic reasons, or indulging to the most convenient shifts in his "strategy"?
One thing is a war, and another thing is terror: with an enemy you can sign a peace treaty which can meet Immanuel Kant's requirements:

«No Treaty of Peace Shall Be Held Valid in Which There Is Tacitly Reserved Matter for a Future War»

But with a blackmail network the "reserved matter for a future war" is permanently there by definition.

Pushing even further the latest attained limit is a penchant for extortions, for an official State can sign a Treaty but a clandestine highly unofficial thing like an extortion gang necessarily has no personality to bind. It has all to be cut on -get a laugh at the paradox- trust! Which foretells permanency of the problem you hoped to get rid of by plugging your nose and paying the ransom.

Also, this is why terrorism is inherently doomed to failure, although before that the planet may become empty of human life: mass extortion is, in the ultimate run, criminal enough to resort to mass destruction guns. And it necessarily hurries towards such ultimate run, for it is fueled by contradictions that demand an exponential pace: in fact it can be soothed only by the ransom, and the all-out vocation which inhabits it, arrays all the elements on the table in order to make them cooperate to conjure up a final blast where no brakes can be pulled: if you attack, you must be attacked, if you don't you are perceived as exposed. Double speed therefore, and no brakes at any stage.

And, given the underlying impossibility to trust it would ever stop or quit, terrorism once commenced forces the opposite side to consider utterly unadvisable whatever type of indulgence. International terrorism is therefore a way to ignite a cubic calamity.

Terrorism automatically poses itself on a ground where the requests it issues are immediately unfillable as soon as they are issued, and no further elaboration is possible from so remote outskirts; and therefore it treads on a ground where invariably either it loses it all or it wins it all, and tertium non datur, not a real third choice: which automatically unveils the necessary vocation of terrorism for all-out ultimate schemes.
Furthermore, no government could ever provide private groups with the acknowledgements due to an official govern: civil war would soon ensue among groups competing for the chance.

You can deal with blackmailers only very rarely, always at your own extreme risk, entailing permanent dependency by the very same act, and just to see them move to the next appealable victim soon - and if that is not you yet, it's because either you've already been squeezed to the marrow or for you're precisely in the line of those palatable next, with an adjunctive potential circularity.

This is why whoever envisioned terrorism as a way to political predominance, envisioned the impossible when it comes to the endgame; especially if the process is applied to a nation which has mobile airborne and submerged overwhelming nuclear power to destroy the planet as many times as 30 (Russia too) and in an eventual showdown would certainly launch them an all the targets that have an intelligence record: forget Tommy Franks, welcome ICBM.
That's all absolutely paradoxical. The only and exclusive outcome of the game is the final destruction of mankind: for one player is not a rational USSR, but what we outlined, and its irrationality is deep enough to lead it to the irretrievable without even realizing the theorems were ultimately unfillable.

One fashionable theory is that one project is the equivalent of another project if they only share an objective: therefore whatever geopolitics is worth any alternative one, for they both are geopolitics; whatever party is worth the other, for they both look after winning the elections; whatever man is worth another, for they both like having savings in the bank account.
So let's have a briefing on the currently known geopolitical projects, possibly keeping in mind an interesting remark by an outstanding (left wing) european political analyst, Norberto Bobbio:

«Fascism is a way to save the capital by sacrificing Democracy; Communism a way of saving Democracy by sacrificing the capital»

I'd add the implied: liberalism a way to preserve both, terrorism a way to sacrifice both.

• Fascism: positively, nazism had an overwhelming industrial project and an industrial basis raised on weaponry steel and energy; I'd find curious therefore to judge this system equivalent to a liberal democracy based on capital savings for they both consider industry pivotal: curious, for the country that most significantly is regarded to embody capitalism, the Usa, fiercely fought against fascisms after having been attacked by them (Perl Harbour).
  It is probably an irony with which history mocks at the no globals, to consider that most of the no global movement strongly identifies itself in left wing positions only to find its current arguments perfectly fit to Mussolini's conspirational theory: the capitalist "plutocratic-judaic plot". Is No Logo pleased to discover this hidden symmetry and objective contiguity with Mein Kampf?

  ---

• Communism: it belongs to the ideologies, like the liberal one, concerned with the issue of the equitable justice, namely focused on the fair reallocation of supplies and resources.
  In this regard, communism is a product stemmed by the branches of the french and english enlightenment rationalism as well as the liberal formula is: in fact justice means to divide in order to share fairly, and dividing has the same radix than rationalism: in fact a mathematical division is called a ratio.
  Just (fair, that is) reallocation of the provisions is therefore an issue brought forth from the european jus-naturalism.
  This all was of no concern for fascisms: fascist goals never included fairness and redistribution as polar references for the social endeavour.
  
  What is the way communism undertook to make fair re allotment of wealth true, and by that attain shared affluence (commonwealth, like the liberal quest indeed)?
  It was a seductive one: equitable diffusion of the social riches/provisions was to be achieved by prohibiting right of ownership; the idea was that if everybody was entitled to everything for nobody could claim an exclusivity on any provision, by this very same fact such common sharing would get converted and translated into impartial and fair redistribution, instantaneously and autonomously and without even tampering with it.
  
  Fascinating idea, that engrossed a few generations in the experiment(s).
  How comes it never worked, whichever flavour it got spiced into?
  The pitfall is that if everybody owns (shares) everything for nobody owns anything, it is likely there will be going nothing to share.
  For you have subtracted one of the most powerful stimuli to production. A society may well be satisfied with sharing what is already available without going any further, posing itself on a bare subsistence level which creates only the minimal and which, most significantly, never breeds a substantial ethic of work indispensable to any social contract which contemplates development as the indispensable matching element of the framework. This is the problem.
  
  It was Ralph Dahrendorf who pointed out the so called Martinez paradox, by the name (if I'm not mistaken) of a Guatemala minister who reported which follows:

  «"before the revolution the shelves were full but no one could afford what was there. Now everyone can" - but [Dharendorf adds] what was on the shelves was nothing: they were almost utterly empty.
  The paradigm within the issue is the shift from wealth without redistribution [fascisms] to redistribution without wealth [communisms, as we saw above]»

  Dahrendorf furthermore shows that the problem are the entitlements: for in some countries you can have one million of dollars but no entitlement to spend them as you lawfully prefer; whereas in other countries you amy have all the entitlements, but you have not the provisions to turn them true.
  Both paradigms are clearly hollow, and in fact both yield poverty and famine.
  
  Right of ownership is therefore not an avenue to the seclusion of wealth, if such a right is an entitlement everyone is entitled to, but a way to reinvest into a global growth which produces windfall effects [Keynes]; and an expression of entitlements in action.
  An ethic of work is indispensable, and how'd you persuade to work those who already share what exists? In fact, the problem of equitable reallocations that sharing would have apparently solved and kicked out of the door, would enter back from the windows in the following shape: in order to produce development and growing wealth instead than mere subsistence, you have to decide who is going to make some works and who is going to make others: now, how are you going to decide which is the fairest reallocation of works, menial and intellectual, hard and easy, dirty and sublime, necessary to produce a fair sharing of wealth which could not be available at all if no actual wealth is at disposal at all?
  
  Should everybody be engrossed in sublime works only, and like in an Eldorado of the Philosophers await for the ground producing what we're in need of by spontaneous generation?
  
  Or perhaps should everybody be allowed to undertake the hard jobs only , an Eldorado of the Brutes never able to generate development and prosperity?
  
  Or perhaps should we beget a strike of wit, and elect an authority amidst communism, meant to assess what your talent is or must be [sovietic quinquennial plans belonged to this type]?
  
  Or should we leave you developing your talent quite freely (quite right and brilliant a move in itself) and with no authorities whatsoever in the way, and thus let raise endless litigations (or worst? maybe we could elect a police to avoid them...) that would ensue when a free talent developed in a communist environment leads before the following unavoidable dilemma: what I did is compared to what you did, and everybody may now argue he/she is entitled to share more since his/her portion of work or talent was most significant or valuable or refined than yours (should we set a standard and prevent everyone from attaining higher goals? or maybe we could even prevent everyone from even aspiring to higher standards).
  Certainly, we may impede everybody from making such a comparative stance like the fore said; but if we do so, we cannot any longer ask any body to work more than what is strictly necessary: which is exactly the problem.
  
  This is precisely the rock on which communisms were bound to wreck, invariably. A communist society is immanently a barter economy, and a barter economy finds itself besieged anew by deep, even stronger allocative (of work) issues, and is consequently basically unfit to yield development: the martinez paradox and its famines await it.
  
  You can depict a communist word only either as a world where everybody has nothing or where everybody has everything, for these and these alone are the formulas that can compete with the right of exclusive ownerships upon contest.
  Now, if everybody is entitled to nothing so that everybody can have all (because the consequence is that nothing really belongs to anybody) I can still and even legally be robbed, exactly because nothing can legally be claimed as mine: if no one is entitled to nothing, this law is fit for burglary too.
  Conversely if everybody is entitled to everything (the consequence is that everything belongs to me too) I can still and even legally claim ownership on you yourself, exactly becasue all you included can be claimed as mine: if everybody is entitled to everything, this law is fit for slave traders too.
  
  Actually those conclusion have a taste that reminds of Rousseau. But regardless of the fact some authors attempted to coerce Rousseau into a communist habit, no Marxist ever resorted to Jean Jacques Rousseau's writings authority to champion communist positions in any significant degree. The fact is that Rousseau's style is so eloquent, that they immediately sensed by it that such good a man, so good that he seems singing from the page, could never be held accomplice of such evil deeds and accomplishments as theirs.
  Rousseau is the poet of the cleanest of the childhoods.
  He still saves all the characteristic of the kid still not contaminated by evil, although endowed with the cunning foresight of the sheer genius.
  Still retaining this childlike component in his psychology, Rousseau became the greatest investigator of such character: his jus naturalism is good, opposed to Hobbes, his savage is naive, and his Emile must not get educated to make him virtuous but to be sure he doesn't get distorted by an education that believes it can make virtuous he who already is such - basically.
  After all, in his Confessions Rousseau takes a considerable amount of discomfort and pain in the very first pages to "confess" us that he had an erotic inclination for being spanked on his butt; he thought, as he said, that if he would be capable of confessing that then he would be capable of confessing everything. And you see this fantasy -far from striking our interest as much as it raised Rousseau's sense of being guilty- isn't but a typically childlike punishment.
  The genius of the child cannot avoid the vice of the child, although only a limited amount of persons would regard it so unappropriated to have to be "confessed".
  It reminds me of some guys running a dating website with whom I had a verbal brawl: they showed so much resentment towards those who were allured inside their service by their free of charge promotion offer and then refused to accept their sudden shift to a paying service status (although they claimed they wanted to keep all the ads, also of those unwilling to pay), that I eventually couldn't but retort:
  "Excuse me, but if you despise so much people playing doctor, how comes you found yourself driving the ambulance?".
  I don't think a man like Rousseau should worry about ambulance drivers.
  
  Under all the above perspectives, let me include an associate allegation, just for we're on topic. Some argue: "The Usa should redistribute better their wealth".
  This is entirely out of the target and off the ball, not only in the sense they already did: let's remember the Usa entirely rebuilt German and Japan, making of its main military foes its main economic worldwide competitors: a move thoroughly unparalleled and with no previous record in universal history: till then, who won in universal history raped, tortured, imposed taxes, pillaged, and other amenities. Who did either previously or after what the Usa did, he please flings the first stone.
  Oh, everybody's still, uh? Perusing my humble history handbook, I'm inclined to judge you're right to be still...
  
  And it is not "a matter of 50 years ago" like some dare say, although who argues so still fully enjoys what was done 50 years ago and the peace which was actively granted since then, let alone the fact the Usa after defeating the USSR let germany reunify and made EU an actual possibility that Europe, let to its own devices -the same ones that made of it the continent which experienced unceasing internal wars for over 2000 years- would have never achieved.
  My european countrymen are very good when it comes to demanding.
  Period.
  
  Therefore we should not invariably argue that the Usa should solve the problems of everybody, always [darn yankees go home: I'm going to blame you louder]: for there is indeed this expectation, as if building a continent weren't enough and they should build a new earth as a whole.
  
  But, more significantly, we can stress that some countries where the redistribution of wealth doesn't occur, do not stumble into this curse because of the Usa, or because they're "poor": you can well have what Dahrendorf calls "famines amidst great wealth" in fact we see countries that have strong oligarchies, if not downright autocracies, in whose leaders' hands is allocated a wealth which is well beyond the current richest man on earth's belongings (supposedly Bill Gates, at least among those who pay taxes and therefore can be tracked down): these guys often spend all this money to build literally golden toilets (sorry for the relatively foul term which just describes an entirely foul reality) in all and each of their 150 bathtubs in their 12th lofty Palace (out of more than 12, most of the times), they raise lavish Castles for themselves, or go shopping to the riviera at a rate of 2 millions a day. Several arab leaders sadly gained a reputation for doing this while complaining of a widespread under development of their countries.
  I have personal difficulties in not believing that whether only a couple of such toilets would not be built and that money would therefore be wielded to build one infrastructure for their own poor countrymen instead of Palaces for themselves, the matter of "redistribution" of wealth would have been instantaneously addressed without (wonder in awe) any need of a Usa involvement at all, and whatsoever.
  You can spend your money as you prefer, but if you do you lose the right to criticize the Usa; and if you spend your money also in order to invest in your own country, why should you then be criticizing the Usa economy any longer?
  Seems that when it comes to kill or to build luxury for the very very few, you always, invariably find the money. When it comes to building pipes for flowing water and for the many, you all of a sudden and invariably realize you're hopelessly "poor". I mean, a State could do both, yes? strong military and wealth for the population. The two things can coexist; if the paradigm doesn't get implemented that way, we can objectively see the reallocation didn't take place and we can objectively reckon that none the less the wealth is there: we could conversely less objectively and more subjectively argue and see less clearly whose fault's that situation should properly be.
  
  No one is saying the Usa didn't ever made some mistakes, like Vietnam indeed.
  They did. And, certainly, some mistakes could be frightening.
  But I find it original that nations like Germany who nearly uniquely made mistakes in their political History and certainly never made such deeds, unbelievable deeds, like those outlined above, should complain against those who made just a few, and eventually one day were to come out saying that Bush (regardless I myself prefer other personalities) is Hitler, forgetting that Hitler was a german invention, not an american one, and that they rule on an unified country they would have not been ruling on without the Usa.
  Like Voltaire exclaimed at the conclusion of his Philosophic Dictionary (be forgiving with my translation): «Almighty Heavens, please send to us such bastards more often!»
  
  Be proud of being an american. Some of us are just french (surrendered to Hitler as soon as he showed up) or dutch, or finnish, or at times russians or maybe pakistani or nigerian. We can be proud, but only as long as we at least don't argue the Usa have less reasons to be such.
  Be proud of being american. Without you, every where, and not just here or there, would be "taleban". When the Usa make a mistake, we should never forget how many nations made only mistakes in history, and be contented (although rightly undertaking all necessary political steps when it happens they are wrong - a french example) with the incredible fact the Usa made so few mistakes although comparatively carrying so big a responsibility.
  
  Eventually, to conclude the issue of communism and of the ethics of work, let's remember Tocqueville once again. He noticed how in some early Usa states there was a thriving economy and in others there was not. He connected the fact, in the engrossing way I'm quoting further on, to the differences between the states that allowed slavery and those that had it not. And here is another unprecedented thing the Usa did: for till then slavery was allowed everywhere and no nation either in Europe (think Spain and France, Britain, and deep in the 20th century even Germany!) or even less out of Europe ever envisioned it was a thing to abolish: the Usa were the first country that waged a civil war (namely without blaming the "others", or the "international influx" of european superpowers of the time) just in order to abolish the thing, the "peculiar institution", that so many nations found quite normal:

  «To define it is to condemn it (...) What is this good thing that no one advocates for himself?» [Lincoln]

  «The plant of liberty is of so tender a nature that it cannot thrive long in the neighborhood of slavery. Remember, the eyes of Europe are fixed upon you, to preserve an asylum for freedom in this country after the last pillars of it are fallen in every other quarter of the globe» [Benjamin Rush, 1773!]

  Or, to use Hugh Brogan's words (a british, and probably among the 3 or 4 most remarkable Usa historiographers available in the world) instead than mine:

  «The historical problem here is to decide why slavery was abolished, not why it arose in the Usa, for it seems to have existed since the dawn of history"

  It is rather ironic that the communist countries that were so well intentioned to produce reallocation by abolishing the right of ownership, were to fall on the contradictions previously analyzed: namely the impossibility to deal with the redistribution of work in order to match sharing of the goods with development of the goods to share; eventually forced to compel the population at work anyway but without granting a right to property, communism ended up producing a slave-like situation.
  So finally and as promised, on this issue the last word is to Tocqueville:

  «(...) that [state] which follows the numerous windings of the Ohio [river] upon the left [bank] is called Kentucky; that upon the right bears the name of the river. These two states differ only in a single respect: Kentucky has admitted slavery, but the state of Ohio has prohibited the existence of slaves within its borders. Thus the traveler who floats down the current of the Ohio to the spot where that river falls into the Mississippi may be said to sail between liberty and servitude; and a transient inspection of surrounding objects will convince him which of the two is more favorable to humanity.
  Upon the left bank of the stream the population is sparse; from time to time one descries a troop of slaves loitering in the half-desert fields; the primeval forest reappears at every turn; society seems to be asleep, man to be idle, and nature alone offers a scene of activity and life.
  From the right bank, on the contrary, a confused hum is heard, which proclaims afar the presence of industry; the fields are covered with abundant harvests; the elegance of the dwellings announces the taste and activity of the laborers; and man appears to be in the enjoyment of that wealth and contentment which is the reward of labor (...)
  
  Upon the left bank of the Ohio labor is confounded with the idea of slavery, while upon the right bank it is identified with that of prosperity and improvement; on the one side it is degraded, on the other it is honored. On the former territory no white laborers can be found, for they would be afraid of assimilating themselves to the Negroes; all the work is done by slaves; on the latter no one is idle, for the white population extend their activity and intelligence to every kind of employment. Thus the men whose task it is to cultivate the rich soil of Kentucky are ignorant and apathetic, while those who are active and enlightened either do nothing or pass over into Ohio, where they may work without shame. (...)
  
  The white inhabitant of Ohio, obliged to subsist by his own exertions, regards temporal prosperity as the chief aim of his existence; and as the country which he occupies presents inexhaustible resources to his industry, and ever varying lures to his activity, his acquisitive ardor surpasses the ordinary limits of human cupidity: he is tormented by the desire of wealth, and he boldly enters upon every path that fortune opens to him; he becomes a sailor, a pioneer, an artisan, or a cultivator with the same indifference, and supports with equal constancy the fatigues and the dangers incidental to these various professions; the resources of his intelligence are astonishing, and his avidity in the pursuit of gain amounts to a species of heroism.
  
  But the Kentuckian scorns not only labor but all the undertakings that labor promotes; as he lives in an idle independence, his tastes are those of an idle man; money has lost a portion of its value in his eyes; he covets wealth much less than pleasure and excitement; and the energy which his neighbor devotes to gain turns with him to a passionate love of field sports and military exercises; he delights in violent bodily exertion, he is familiar with the use of arms, and is accustomed from a very early age to expose his life in single combat. Thus slavery prevents the whites not only from becoming opulent, but even from desiring to become so.» [Democracy in America]

  ---

• Liberalism: it shares a goal with communism, for as we saw both proceed from the same source: the rationalism of the enlightenment.
  In fact it is concerned with the attempt to grant a fair reallocation of the resources as communism was.
  But in liberalism this purpose is achieved with a way entirely different by the communist one: people do not share the goods, abdicating the right of ownership, but they share a vast set of entitlements (called rights) to pursue the goods. And abdicate none.
  In other words, it is the full blown development of the concept of citizenship what matters here: citizenship can be seen as an instantaneous enablement [Dahrendorf] to the whole of the entitlement set of the country for the very simple reason you were born there, and the goods can be achieved not by a social status but through your own work: goods are shared for they are all accessible by your work, which as such is in the capabilities of everybody, and you escalate the goods since the law tries to clear as many obstacle as possible from your way (the Usa is the country where you can find University teachers who are 20 years old, and whose average age is 35).
  This does not prevent societies from developing thieves and swindlers: those whose choices have always been a masterpiece can expect this.
  But societies are imperfect, and miracles are not performed: natural stupidity is a product of nature, not of society. And this doesn't prevent a liberal society from having some problems, analytically focused by Dawns and Schumpeter. It simply prevents it from having so many and so big (like famines or extermination by the police) as we encountered in communism or fascism. Which's is not small a thing, bud.
  
  Along with what outlined above, here we have another unique deed performed by the Usa before everybody else: and this is not apologetic, this are the reasons after which I like the United States: challenging the model of society based on the status, namely aristocracy, whereas you could access the goods only accordingly to the level of your birth.
  
  Honestly, there is no country in universal history that fought so much and to such a magnitude and with such a stubbornness and on all theatres for liberty. It is actually a leftist country (call it center-left), if we finally stop considering leftists those who actually are just fascists under a red seasoning.
  Try a comparison, and then hate: for that's a way me and you have never been, and a record me and you never owned.
  
  The Usa were the first modern country to elect leaderships on a regular basis and to reject the aristocratic model that the whole of the other countries employed without exceptions of any sort.

  «By the middle of the eighteenth century royal officials were anxiously concerned with the instability of the American society; and the air was filled with proposals for reorganizing [in the Usa] an aristocratic structure. (...) By the 1760 various kinds of proposal were circulating, all generally pointing to the establishment in America of a "Nobility appointed by the King for life", which could eventually become hereditary. These plans seemed to be no idle tinkering by insignificant and uninfluential British officials (...) Ministers close to the crown were doing the same.
  (...)[But] this sort of suggestion only confirmed American apprehensions (...) "how eagerly they wish to form distinctions among us, that they may create a few more tools of oppression. They wish to see us aspire to Nobility (...) Crown officials (...) who prefer basking in the sunshine of some British royalty and court favour, to the simple practice of work"
  (...) Tyrants, Americans realized (...) needed to corrupt only a few who in their turn "have overawed the rest". And for the smallest trifle, "for a yard of ribband, or for the sake of wearing any bit of finery at his tail" a man could have been influenced» [Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic]

  You're not going to find many entire populations ready, in 1750, to be so steady before a duke and a duchess, elsewhere than in theory.
  This is the way you can make a nation powerful and rich. I find alternative ways to the same outcome not equivalent at all.

  ---

• Terrorism: this is the apparently new method of domination. Apparently, for it is just the most radical version of nihilism and anarchy.
  In this case neither rights nor goods are of any concern; the power on society is granted by making sure a "non society" is into place, whose population is so much impoverished and brutalized that no instability whatsoever can emerge from the base to challenge the system. It cannot even be imagined, a challenge.
  
  Everything is pursued through ignorance: for you cannot desire what you don't even know could exist. Thence those extremely paranoic policies implemented against images, magazines, or music or colors or clothing. And obviously books.
  
  You create those eleatic gerontocracies, like some iranian pictures of the 80s, where the sakina, the divine tranquillity conferred to the righteous, is replaced by the analgesic, and which are permanently busy to stand out and dominate over such a desert that in order to stand out over it it is enough just to stand in it.
  
  Everyone must be poor, everyone must be unlearned and highly uncultivated, everyone must be scared, everyone must be too busy with the most elemental needs, everyone must have no social status, so that everyone will even ignore he is suffering.
  
  That's the taleban model in the way the Khomeinist regime defined it: "Islam of the cave age".
  Wait to have to deal with the real thing, bud.

When some thing is in the scabbard of history, it won't be kept sheathed forever. The outcome may be dubious. The timing may be unprecise. The degree may be varying. But the challenge is certain.

«(...) to rouse your spirit against Fortune and to be on the watch for all her missiles, not as if they might possibly come, but as if they were bound to come.» [Seneca, Moral Epistles]

It is therefore of no great importance whether you dig the viper out, or you wait to get bitten when you sit in nearby it. The Golgotha of the Superpowers spares nothing.
No nation, no empire, not even the roman empire, has had to face so many, and of so colossal proportions, and so cataclysmic challenges in a row, like the United States of America.

The reasoning behind the attacks is simple, even primitive: I am surprised so many young men so allegedly able to read and foresee behind the foreground of the appearences, have been able to see any thing except what is there.

Usa, United Kingdom, United Nations, Russia, France, Italy, Spain: everybody is taken on, in the statements. No one has been neglected.
And the plain reasoning is: instead than fighting them all, it is sufficient to fight the biggest of them.
To some degree, this is the tactics opposite to Richelieu who, in order to weaken the Habsburg, fought the Habsburg in Germany for he could not afford fighting the more powerful spanish branch of it in Spain.
If the Usa fall, a domino effect would fatally ensue.
This is why the Usa are hit as first and more prominently: all the other countries have already been mentioned: all of them. But the Usa only are the prime focus of the fire. And the reason is not that the Usa did something that the Uk or France did not or that you deserved exemption: the reason is that once done with the Usa, your ass too belongs to the terrorists in its fullness and without any need to even have a look at you.

Terrorists have officially declared (reported by prisoners in Afghanistan) that they have to hit all the infidels (regardless now on how they identify them); but most of the infidels irrefutably derive their strength from the Usa; but the power of the Usa is based on the military; and the fierce military is based on the funds allotment allowed by the dimensions of the economy. This what they have considered.
Morale: focus hitting the economy. There we go: World Trade Center fits well, don't you think so? There we go: what matters is to go on releasing indications about "hitting the economy", for everything else depends upon that.
Moreover, the fact is: you have to allocate properly a relatively limited amount of resources, so one more reason to concentrate them on the big fish.

So here is a bifurcation: you can hit the Usa either directly, or by shrinking the global economy with attacks to the latter (which as such doesn't necessarily involves the Usa soil at all; and which, this time, resembles more the successful traversal strategy adopted by Richelieu against the Habsburg).
Crippling economy worldwide is not a problem, in the eyes of these intentions; for there would not be any more any economy any longer, after a collapse of the Usa: so why getting too much concern with it?
None the less, there would certainly be loot enough for a reduced minority which hopes to survive the final faceoff. Moreover, infrastructures are not needed, ignorance of the population a requisite to implement carefully so that the leaderships cannot be questioned, poorness and destitition the wider among populations the better, for they prevent populations from arraying any form or even conception of resistance.

One of the things that were hoped in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was to "finally force the Usa to respond" and get them compromised inside Afghanistan. The idea was that since in Afghanistan one army, the red army, was defeated and in the perception of the terrorists this led to the collapse of the Ussr, therefore also an Usa involvement would have caused a likewise quagmire where the Usa would have bled to death.
The wrong and quite opposite result (the Usa wiped out the local regime in less than 2 months) was a direct consequence of a previous misinterpretation: it has never been the afghans who collapsed the Ussr, but the cold war and eventually the high military expenses policy implemented by Reagan. Without that, the Russians not only would have still been in Afghanistan, but would also have crushed it by using the funds they got bound to use differently.
How comes in Afghanistan they had a different perception, is going to remain, honestly, one of the grand miscalculations of history.

You don't have to believe me: facts are enough.
The main leader of the afghan Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud, was killed on september 9, 2001. Two days later came the 9/11 attack. Therefore it is obvious they were hoping for a Usa intervention for the foremost thing which was made on the very eve of 9/11 in that very same country was to be sure the only internal competing force in that country was weakened first.
And since the Usa intervention was wanted, but a support by the Northern Alliance to it was not, here how comes in the same string 9/11 yes, Ahmed Shah Massoud no.

The reason it has been opted for a gradual tactic of attacks, increasing in size, is that the confidence in the goodness of the strategy is high, and therefore it is possible to proceed by trial and errors and, in the light which predicates that given the goodness of the strategy all the roads lead to the same result, you can engage partial steps instead than tackling immediately the allegedly fatal, bigger, and more demanding and perilous one. Several taleban leaders have declared their target is the physical destruction of the United States.

It is certainly curious to ponder this mentality which, while envisioning the generous goal of bountiful and arguably interminable chaos following the fall of the Usa, shows parsimony in the details.
This is streamlining accompanied into absurdity: optimizing mayhem, which has a precedent only in nazism; rationality at the service of brutal cruelty.
In the case of the arab fundamentalism, it is a byproduct of the strange outcomes that can derive whenever such mentality makes an attempt to adopt forms of rationality born elsewhere: an hybrid, spurious result is generated by this acquisition by imitation.

One example is mr. Saddam Hussein, a rational actor indeed, but in one occasion he produced such an hybrid: claiming that his 100% victory in a 100% affluence electoral contest on october 2002 was "a unique manifestation of democracy, which is superior to all other forms of democracies".
It is as if he believes that voting is only a blundering that democracies commit in the pursue of an implicit goal: getting full unanimity. Therefore, Hussein seems to argue: why bothering with such a process which appears as an unnecessary complication in regard of the presumed intention?

But a democracy -the forma imperii which typically votes- doesn't want to solve the social strife by excluding (annihilating the opponents), but by including them.
And doesn't want to include them by crushing them into obedience, but by institutionalizing the social conflict into a recurrent check (votes) where no stand off on the decisions can occur for the majority wins and therefore enacts: the groups who lose have a variety of subsequent minor chances, and then general elections again.
It is the understanding of the logics of this device (voting) performing as a balance that generates social inclusion of diversity and variety, which is missing.
I do not deny 100% may occur, although it is unheard of in universal history.
But I do say that 100% as a intentionally searched for result is not democracy, but the negation of democracy: for democracy treasures varicolored difference, not fully compliant homogeneity.

Another example of this difficulty to understand imported types of rationality has been provided by saudi officials when they said of a wide malcontent that was not emerging for "fortunately, we're not a democracy", whereas this is not the solution to the problem, and to be honest neither the problem; but it is an admission that democracy finds no condition to plunge root there, for if it would have found them, such foundings would have never emerged for they would have never existed in such virulent form in the first place.
Conversely, you can also find remarkable articles where the understanding of the issue is profound, effective, shakes off the prejudice, and invites to reciprocate: [example by arabianews - on this article may be useful to specify english is not my native tongue as well].

As fore said, the terrorist project in the last run makes no sense, being fundamentally unattainable: it would eventually trigger a shower of megatons (no one can doubt that if the Usa would face extinction). The actor is irrational: Secretary Powell said:

«(...) that the potential connection between terrorists and weapons of mass destruction move terrorism to a new level of threat, a threat that could not be deterred because of this connection between states developing weapons of mass destruction and terrorist organizations willing to use them without any compunction and in an undeterrable fashion» [source]

Therefore terrorism is quite capable of irrational use of mass destruction weapons without even considering either the non conventional reaction because either of an overconfidence in the supposed untraceable nature of adverse targets, or because is not really aware of the fact that in an air-routes connected word whatever biological agent that went undetected during the incubation period is liable to spread all around the globe before an outbreak signals its presence. This would well lead to casualties to be counted by a billion, possibly even more significantly located in those underdeveloped countries where the access to health care is problematic by chronic structural deficiencies. These actors, simply, are irresponsible and ignorant enough to give it a try and miscalculate as heavily as they already did in Afghanistan.

A good way to reintroduce deterrence in a picture where deterrence has been significantly ousted, would be to make known that retaliation plans do exist: it is not necessary to name the countries, but simply to state the nature of the plan: in case of all-out attacks or non conventional attacks jeopardizing the Usa, the Use would target with non conventional weapons all those targets that have collected a record of terrorist presence.
It might be useful to make such a shift in the non conventional policies known expressing it as a ratio; destruction expressed a s a ratio delivers a meaning that counteracts the terrorist destruction: if terrorism can de-construct construction by an act of irrational anarchy, construction must reaffirm its competitive fitness to de-construct by an act of ratio-nality. Therefore a message like "The United States are repositioning 2/5 of their non conventional arsenals, both fixed and mobile" might help reintroduce from the window a dash of that rationality expelled from the door.
It would certainly be a scary message knowing that a mass attack already liable to spread anywhere by itself, might go matched with a global reprisal that would add to cooperate subtracting resources and manpower to the attacker as well.

In the meanwhile, research should focus on gravitational weapons.
Weapons capable of altering the field a target moves in, instead than pinpointing the single target inside the field (much more demanding a task than altering the fluid it moves in): weapons that by a localized gravity alteration may either bounce or lift into the air or crush to the ground, or lift and release whatever type of object.
Gravitational waves should no longer be considered like something that only a supernova releases, as it is currently believed; but they should start being hypothesized like something which is very likely to be already around us every day, and that our biological system is fit to perceive; blunt logics persuades us of the likelihood of this illation being true.
So whatever type of eucaryote which sports a primitive nervous system, should be tested to see whether combinations of gravitation/nerve/membrane (skin) impulses can help finding out new laws. After all, never forget skin and nervous system are the same thing, although science doesn't know yet: for nature does knows it, in fact generates both by the same embryonic sheet.
If gravitational waves are around us like everything should suggest, then also every biological system must manage them, and if it does it does it by the nervous system, thus the combination gravity/skin/nerve is the poker to investigate.

Of course, Al Qaeda's plan does not make sense: but the fact is, what more characterizes the terrorist bid to world dominance as compared to nazism and communism, is that the two latter ones where intelligent after all, whereas the former is openly obtuse: basically primitive, that is. So this round a defence must be made against a dominance plan which is based on a form of madness.
Hence when you speak of "pre-emptiveness", and you force the Usa to reconsider their strategies and compel them to say «military intervention would come to be seen as a constant fixture of the geo-political landscape» [source], you're not meaning you believe any war would really solve any situation immediately: when you speak of pre-emptive you simply speak out one of the elements that this particular arrangement of facts and challenges, that this peculiar tangle, this crossroad in history, conjures up by itself when it unfolds what in its inner logics belongs to the logics much more than whatever any man meant to put in it or hoped/feared to elicit from it or find in it.

World destruction as an irrational way to hope to install domination by the subsequent sweeping misery, calls by itself the concept of pre-emptiveness, for it is paramount and crystal clear that the world destruction is by itself something you cannot defend from any longer if you wait long enough to let it happen and roll throughout.
So preemptiveness is neither a recipe, nor a cure-all, nor a politics right or wrong: it is simply the necessity (the ananke the ancient greeks would have called it) which palpitates of its own life within the challenge, and which breeds its own pre-emptive embodiments; they march like the only spell with a minimal chance to avert a biblical catastrophe brought forth by a rotten, sick irrationality, that would eventually benefit absolutely no one.