Welcome! Our goal is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. The briefing is being split today. One feature will deal with Iraq, while this feature handles The Wider War.

TOP TOPICS

• Fouad Ajami's Foreign Policy Magazine article on Anti-Americanism as a global phenomenon is also much-discussed these days. One of his more interesting points: the USA did not 'squander the world's sympathy' post-9/11 - in many places, it's clear they never had it. For my money, British writer Ian Buruma did an even better job in in "Wielding the Moral Club."

• * Mark Helprin, via OTB: "America has approached the war on terrorism as if from two dreamworlds.... And in between these dreamworlds of paralysis and incompetence lies the seam, in French military terminology la soudure, through which al-Qaeda, uninterested in our parochialisms, will make its next attack." Thought-provoking.

• The full Den Beste on the U.S. State Department, including Gingrich's "Rogue State Department" article and what could/should be done to reform it. SDB's central criticism, and a valid one: "overall the basic culture and values in State don't seem to match those of the voters of this nation. State seems to be trying to "do the right thing" in spite of us, rather than taking their cue on what the right thing is from us." This story snaps that tendency into clear focus as well as anything I've ever seen.

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