The Nature Of War

From Auden:

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade.

We suspect that the 90s will go down as a false start for our inter-connected world; the wars that have followed and are yet to come are the wages of our decade-long (liberalism-laced) celebration of the fall of communist Moscow.

While we partied, the merchants of death plotted. While we booked unearned capital gains, terrorist hyenas (paraphrasing Eliot) laughed without mirth. They even read Orwell and excelled in doublespeak -- suicide bombings and nationalism obscenely became linked.

This evil wave crested on 9/11. All tides (even tsunamis) eventually turn back -- or are held back by determined and sensible people of goodwill.

This is the nature of the war we are in. The shrieking left and cynical terror apologists either don't get it or get it but don't care. Either way, they stand in the way of defeating the evil shadow of terror in our world.