Terror is the Price of Empire (Patrick J. Buchanan, quoted by Liz Smith)

'Osama bin Laden is saying exactly what the enemies of the western empires said through the 20th century: The price of your occupation, the price of your empire in our world, is terror. The Islamic terrorists of 9/11 were over here because we were over there. We took sides in a religious civil war, their war, and they want us out of that war. The 15 hijackers from Saudi Arabia did not fly into the World Trade Center to protest the Bill of Rights. They want us off sacred Saudi soil and out of the Middle East."

So writes Patrick J. Buchanan in his compelling new book, "Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency."

If you are surprised that this column would commend anything from the ultra-conservative Buchanan, so am I. But wise people change their minds and keep them open. I have rarely read anything so concise and so right-on about our disastrous blunder of invading Iraq. Buchanan spells it all out. If you want to know why the Middle East despises us, read this book, especially the first few chapters. There's some pretty scary stuff on the U.S. economy, too.

Buchanan compares the United States in 2004 to the Roman empire, on the cusp of a perhaps inevitable decline. And he points to our invasion of Iraq - a country that had not attacked us, and was not an immediate danger - as the beginning of the end for imperial America.

A little bit more at http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/news/ny-a3966912sep14,0,6989373.column ; this is the first item in Liz Smith's column from Tuesday...

the Wrong Guy at the Wrong Time and into the Worst Place....

That be W alright.

and remarkably dunderheaded on others.

of the Press and Religion. He's a difficult man to trust.