Great piece, Mr. Kamiya; as you'd said, none of your prescriptive measures are radical -- it's a reflection of the radicalism of the rogue Bush administration that such otherwise reasonable options are entirely off the table, which makes me wonder if the Bush League is simply and cynically going down that wrong path for the express purpose of permanent war, or if they're simply deluded by their Faustian ideology.

Related to that, I think a vital fourth component (that'll surely not be considered by reactionaries or liberals) is our military support to the region, which can only exacerbate our imperial posture.

Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan (and, I presume, Pakistan) to name a few, are all beneficiaries of our steady military aid. Iran's own Islamist revolution was a reaction to our cozy relationship with the corrupt and autocratic Shah, which included heaps of military aid for decades.

Terrorism and guerrilla warfare are always the poor army's weapon against a militarily superior opponent, and I can't help but think that it's another of our self-created problems, as our own military spending far outstripped the rest of the world's combined, the notion of a regular army facing American power in the field was decisively laid to rest in Gulf War I. Any smart adversary would invariably rely on unconventional warfare against us, because it's the only effective response to a superior army.

So, our choice is to (1) maintain our arms dealer to the world stance (while preaching peace, of course), propping up client dictatorships that toe our line more or less; (2) wage endless conventional war against guerrillas and terrorists, until we're bled dry of money and (wo)manpower; (3) create an unconventional death squad special forces-type army that we can drop into any country at will while relying on a world-straddling, human rights-violating intelligence network and commit assassinations at will of anybody we don't like (e.g., we become the terrorists, the rogue nation, the destroyer of the international order, the international outlaw); (4) fund paramilitaries in the Third World to do our searching and destroying for us; (5) all of the above; or (6) none of the above.

Seems to me that 1-5 have been increasingly applied by our country since the 1950s, with ever-diminishing returns; certainly our moral standing in the world has been diminished markedly -- the Bush League's fast-tracking on 1-5 led to a nosedive in American prestige, and yet they won't turn back from that.

Whatever our leaders want this militarist approach to do, or think it can do, it's not doing, and is leaving us increasingly isolated and hated by the rest of the world. We must throttle back on the military largesse and favor honest, free trade, and strengthen our diplomacy if we're to have lasting security.

We must be brave enough to let democracy and self-determination manifest itself not as we dictate it, but as the people in the countries in question want it to be. Do people in other countries have a right to self-determination, or only a right to be what we want them to be (trusting in our uniquely exceptional virtue, of course)? That's at the heart of the American dilemma in this century, whether Americans recognize it or not.

Great piece, Digby! I think reporters should ask Thompson what are his favorite brands of makeup, and whether he applies them himself, or relies on a stylist to do it for him -- you know, human interest reporting combined with news you can use. That'd play well with the brimstone base the GOP depends on for their votes these days.

Matthews' blockheaded comments reveal his Nixonian affinity...

rather than hundreds of thousands of hard hats going up against lefty college students.

There weren't that many "hardhats," even in Nixon's day -- I think it was maybe 200, so wishful thinking, Hardballer Matthews...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Hat_riot

Mitch "the Bitch" McConnell stuck to his GOP talking points handouts, sure enough, but this one made me laugh...

This isn't Hollywood. This is real life here in the Senate.

Yeah, Mitch. The Senate is real life, where everybody's a millionaire or better, where everybody has a vote in the governing of the nation, where the guys vastly outnumber the women, and where a vocal, white, male, reactionary Republican minority can call the tune for the rest of the country.

Boy, does he ever need to get voted out in 2008, so he can experience some really real life; but then, he'll probably don some tasseled loafers and become a lobbyist once he's cashiered from the Senate, maybe "Americans for Tax Justice" or some other Orwellian-named anti-estate tax lobbying organization.