Little Hawk recommends a column by Gwynne Dyer, as he or someone else did recently in another thread. I haven't read this particular article, but in a general way, I heartily join in any such recommendation. Gwynne Dyer is knowledgeable, intelligent, hard-nosed, and looks at each situation he tackles on its own merits, without applying some extraneous political outlook to it, other than a flexible combination of liberalism and pragmatism. (Note to American right-wingers and international neo-cons: "liberal" is not a dirty word).