I did it OUR way (time to resubscribe to The New Yorker)

[Terrance]

"Most nations—including the United States—are still
unsure of the character and the consequences of the
unipolar world," Fareed Zakaria writes in "Our
Way." "The confusion has increased dramatically
since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
which for many Americans revealed the country's
vulnerability: America's overwhelming military
power cannot keep it safe." Arguing that the Bush
Administration is in some ways following a template
laid down by Woodrow Wilson, Zakaria suggests
that unilateralism "cannot be an organizing principle
of foreign policy. It is a disposition, or, at most, a
means." Zakaria argues that President Bush, in a
speech he gave at West Point in June, in which he
said that "America has, and intends to keep, military
strengths beyond challenge, thereby making the
destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless, and
limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of
peace," made "the most Wilsonian statement any
President has made since Wilson himself." "It is a
breathtaking statement," Zakaria writes, "promising
that American power will transform international
politics itself, making the millennia-old struggle over
national security obsolete." In the end, "when the
international system is given help from
America—most crucially, in the establishment of
peace and order—it can work surprisingly well."

Yeah, that Underworld is a wonderful book. I read most of it on the
Subways, under the 
Garden, across the East River, back to Time Square, up and past the
blues seats of Yankee Stadium, down to Wall Street, under the towers,
along the Brooklyn Bridge and out to Flatbush. Now the towers and the
church on the cover, are torn, an arrangement in black death and gray 
ashes. The giant bird yawing into the towers transmuted in my memory
forever. A phoenix. Yes, Edgar, saints and angels appear to bank
presidents and the Phoenix is sometimes a bird of terror.  Angels and
Saints, hearts and bones appear. Sometimes only as the foul and
putrescent smell from ashes rising from a parade of Peterbilts marching
into the Waste filled lands of the Jerseys. There, all our brothers and
sisters, consumed by fire, will rise again. 

But there is living color in that book. An earful of silky trombone
colors blasts from the TV and is captured in the camera's eye drawing
down power in industrial orange and spewing ghostly grays across the sky
and over skin pigments no one but God may know the complexions of. 

There is the secret of the bomb and there are secrets that the bomb
inspires, things even the Director cannot guess--a man whose own
sequestered heart holds every festering secret in the Western
world--because these plots are only now evolving. 

And what is the connection between US and Them, how many bundled links
do we bind in the neural labyrinth? It's not enough to hate your enemy.
You have to understand how the two of you bring each other to deep
completion. The old dead fucking the new. The dead raising coffins from
the earth. The hillside dead tolling the old rugged bells that clang for
the sins of the world. 

This is the people's history and it has flesh and breath that quickens
to the force of this old safe game of ours. Waste is a religious thing.
The Jesuits taught me to examine things for second meanings and
connections. 




Also is the New Yorker (almost tossed my cornbread and coffee on Frank's
polished shoes when I read about Condi christening an oil tanker in
Brazil) is a profile of Rice. Flattering to say the least. Behind every
fumbling fool with his finger on the bomb is a woman who can play My Way
and Bach too.