"to people in August 1914, the assassination of Ferdinand did feel like the beginning of the end of all good things. They knew it was pitching the world into crisis and war and that things would never be the same.

The problem is, they felt like that during the 1905 First Morocan Crisis; the 1911 Second Morocan Crisis; and the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars."

The sense of foreboding that seemed to accompany the July 1914 crisis was partly retrospective. I'm thinking of the volume of Osbert Sitwell's memoirs( Great Morning)in which he talks about the "omens" that appeared in the summer of 1914 before the crisis broke.

Still, some statesmen at the time recognized that the situation after Sarejevo was different. There's the comment by the German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg: "if the iron dice roll, may God help us." And there's the British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey's more famous "the lamps are going out all over Europe, we will not see them lit again in our lifetime."

What I find particularly disturbing are the parallels between the US today and pre-1914 Germany. There's the same fundamental aimlessness when it comes to policy as well as the self-fulfilling tendency to create enemies and then feel threatened and surrounded by those very same "enemies". By 1912, German policy-makers had pretty much concluded that a general war--the sooner the better--was the only way to shake up the European order in a way that favored German interests(cw the neocon desire to invade Iraq before 9/11). There's also the tendency to cling to Israel as an ally just as Germany wound up clinging to Austria-Hungary, to the point of issuing what amounts to a "blank check" to any action Israel takes regardless of consequences...

...the situation is hopeless, but not serious.

Bush seeks political gains from foiled plot

by Olivier Knox

Thu Aug 10, 2:53 PM ET

CRAWFORD, United States (AFP) - US President George W. Bush seized on a foiled London airline bomb plot to hammer unnamed critics he accused of having all but forgotten the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

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Weighed down by the unpopular war in Iraq, Bush and his aides have tried to shift the national political debate from that conflict to the broader and more popular global war on terrorism ahead of November 7 congressional elections.

The London conspiracy is "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation," the president said on a day trip to Wisconsin.

"It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America," he said. "We've taken a lot of measures to protect the American people. But obviously we still aren't completely safe."

His remarks came a day after the White House orchestrated an exceptionally aggressive campaign to tar opposition Democrats as weak on terrorism, knowing what Democrats didn't: News of the plot could soon break.

Vice President Dick Cheney and White House spokesman Tony Snow had argued that Democrats wanted to raise what Snow called "a white flag in the war on terror," citing as evidence the defeat of a three-term Democratic senator who backed the Iraq war in his effort to win renomination.

But Bush aides on Thursday fought the notion that they had exploited their knowledge of the coming British raid to hit Democrats, saying the trigger had been the defeat of Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut by an anti-war political novice.

"The comments were purely and simply a reaction" to Democratic voters who "removed a pro-defense Senator and sent the message that the party would not tolerate candidates with such views," said Snow.

The public relations offensive "was not done in anticipation. It was not said with the knowledge that this was coming," the spokesman said.

Snow said Bush first learned in detail about the plot on Friday, and received two detailed briefings on it on Saturday and Sunday, as well as had two conversations about it with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

But a senior White House official said that the British government had not launched its raid until well after Cheney held a highly unusual conference call with reporters to attack the Democrats as weak against terrorism.

An aide to Lieberman, who would have been one of the first Democrats to hear of the plot because he is the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said the lawmaker first heard of it late Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Cheney had suggested that Democrats believe "that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in this conflict and be safe here at home, which clearly we know we won't, we can't, be," he said.

While some Democrats have opposed some steps in the war on terrorism, and more and more are calling for a withdrawal from Iraq, no major figures in the party have called for a wholesale retreat in the broader conflict.

But Bush's Republicans hoped the raid would yield political gains.

"I'd rather be talking about this than all of the other things that Congress hasn't done well," one Republican congressional aide told AFP on condition of anonymity because of possible reprisals.

"Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play big," said another White House official, who also spoke on condition of not being named, adding that some Democratic candidates won't "look as appealing" under the circumstances.