Glad to see my point of view mirrored in today's New York Times:
"The United States has a strategic problem: its war on terror, unlike its long fight against Communism, is not universally seen as the pivotal global struggle of the age...these continents are more or less united in a critical view of an American power routinely described as hegemonic and intent on using the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to impose what Candido Mendes, a Brazilian political analyst, called "a civilization of fear."
Indeed...
