by Salim Muwakkil

Much of the U.S. media are awash in triumphant words and images heralding our "victory" in Afghanistan. America's military is said to have performed heroically and, we are told, the Taliban enemies have been routed with surprising efficiency.

Let's stop for a minute and soberly survey exactly what so far has been accomplished: Through the overwhelming power of sophisticated weapons, the world's mightiest military apparently has forced a shaky regime of religious idealists to abandon their leadership experiment.

The Taliban assumed power in 1996 to bring order to a nation that had spiraled into anarchy following the 1992 defeat of the Soviet-backed regime of President Najibullah. The so-called Northern Alliance, that same group of folks we now hail as the nation's saviors, also held sway during this time of anarchy. "The Northern Alliance's Islamic state of Afghanistan was less a government than a state of institutionalized chaos," wrote Ted Rall in a Nov. 28 dispatch from Afghanistan published on the AlterNet Web site (www.alternet.org).

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by Robert Kuttner

RECENTLY, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman christened the war aganst terrorism World War III. But that's too apocalyptic. A better name would be Cold War II.

The first Cold War was ''a prolonged twilight struggle,'' in George Kennan's famous phrase. It was punctuated with periods of hot war, in Korea and in Vietnam. But for the most part it lived up to its name - an uneasy armed peace with jittery alerts, cloak and dagger operations, and proxy skirmishes between client states.

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The United States is in Denial About Why So Many Millions in the World Regard It as Their Enemy
by Wallace Shawn

To: The Foreign Policy Therapist

From: The United States of America

Dear Foreign Policy Therapist,

I don't know what to do. I want to be safe. I want safety. But I have a terrible problem.

It all began several weeks ago, when I lost several thousand loved ones to a horrible terrorist crime. I feel an overwhelming need to apprehend and punish those who committed this unbearably cruel act, but they designed their crime in such a diabolical fashion that I cannot do so, because they arranged to be killed themselves while committing the crime, and they are now all dead.

I feel in my heart that none of these men, however, could possibly have planned this crime themselves and that another man, who is living in a cave in Afghanistan, must surely have done so. At any rate I know that some people he knows knew some of the people who committed the crime and possibly gave them some money.

I feel an overwhelming need to kill this man in the cave, but the location of the cave is unknown to me, and so it's impossible to find him.

He's been allowed to stay in the cave, however, by the fanatical rulers of the country where the cave is, Afghanistan, so I feel an overwhelming need to kill those rulers.

As they've moved from place to place, though, I haven't found them, but I've succeeded in finding and killing many young soldiers who guarded them and shepherds who lived near them.

None the less, I do not feel any of the expected "closure," and in fact I'm becoming increasingly depressed and am obsessed with nameless fears. Can you help me?

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by Ed McManus

What a mess we’re in.

Our country was viciously attacked by a bunch of fanatical thugs, and we knew we had to do something, anything, to prevent it from happening again. There were some of us who had little faith in the ability of our government—our elected representatives—to do it right. Trouble is, most people in America didn’t seem to share our concern. Trouble is, they were so shook up by what happened in September that they just wanted to be assured that something, anything, was being done about it.

President Bush’s approach to the problem has been to meet terror with terror, violence with violence—to bomb Afghanistan and its starving people. To oust the Taliban—apparently so those sorry substitutes, the Northern Alliance, could start running things. To make noises about expanding the war to Iraq. And to commission his attorney general to go to war against the Constitution, threatening the very civil liberties that make our country what it is.

Let’s take a deep breath and look at what’s happening.

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by Seth Sandronsky

It was 1967 and I was a fifth-grader. Market Street in San Francisco was the place. Thousands of people were protesting the Vietnam War, including my mother and sister. We were there with friends to join others in a call to end the war.

Then, many common people were dissenting against government policies at home and abroad. The anti-Vietnam War and Civil Rights movements had energized large sections of the U.S. public. People were participators rather than spectators in American democracy. They made up the U.S. Left, broadly defined. It is a long way today from that high-water point.

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by Rose Moss

A lifetime ago, I emigrated to America, became a citizen and, like millions of others, wept and cheered at our love and courage on Sept. 11. I have come to love the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the history of Americans who have given their lives that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth. Throughout the world, people know what America stands for, the principles that lie at the heart of our democracy, prosperity, and allure.

Heartsore and fearful, I am grieving for what has happened to America. I came to this country shortly after the apartheid government authorized the minister of justice or subordinates to detain anyone suspected of guilt or innocent knowledge of something implying someone else's guilt for crimes like terrorism. The detained could be kept for 90 days, infinitely renewable this side of eternity. The detained had no right to see a lawyer, doctor, minister or family.

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