My Fear is...

Submitted by Lee Harris (United States), Feb 28, 2006 at 18:31

Brilliant piece. My fear however, is that by refusing to immediately and openly acknowledge the failure of our noble intentions we may bring about a strategic disaster in the worst sense, by which I mean a catastrophic loss of confidence in America's good judgment and competency.

It wasn't, in the final analysis, our military might that made the Pax Americana, but the fact that we ran a successful world order, so to speak. Our leadership in the world can survive this failure; but it cannot survive the failure to recognize this failure. Staying the course, at this moment, will lead to a collapse into a Time of Even More Troubles than we have already. Looking at the other operative agents in the world, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, I get the disturbing sense of jackals hovering around a wounded lion, all of whom are wondering just how wounded he is.

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