john perry barlow is contemplating war in the land of peace :

"Even if victory is swift and painless , we will have wounded, perhaps mortally, the peace-waging capacity of the United Nations.

We will have sewn deep discord within the European Union and badly damaged relations with two of our most important allies, France and Germany.

We will have destroyed remaining popular support for the governments of Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, our three most important allies in the Middle East.

We will have established - and not only for ourselves - the legitimacy of preemptive attack.

We will have radicalized half a billion young Muslims, transforming a monster into a martyr in their eyes.

We will have installed ourselves as the rulers of an energy colony that will not be easy to govern, given the bitter - and, to us, inscrutable - divisions that exist between its Shiites, its Sunni, and its Kurds.

We will have brought ourselves to the brink of active hostilities with Turkey, formerly a strong ally.

We will have bankrupted the teetering American economy.

We will have inserted long-term instability in world financial and energy markets.

We will have devalued the currency of American moral authority to the vanishing point. We will have turned America, long the hope of the world, into the most feared and hated of nations. We will have traded our national capacity to inspire for a mere capacity to intimidate.

And for what? To avenge 9/11 by punishing a regime that had no proven role in it? Out of humane concern for the Iraqi people, whom we have been, by our own policies, starving and impoverishing for the last decade? In order to destroy possibly mythical "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, even while we abide their proven existence in such potentially irrational countries as Pakistan, Israel, India, France, and, hardly least, the United States? The Administration attacked before it ever provided a justification that would satisfy any but the most TV-enchanted Christian soldier."

in related news. it's unfortunate to see another high profile resignation from a foreign service employee. one wonders how many foreign service employees don't have the means or the conviction to end their careers when they can no longer defend the countries policies:

"This is the only time in my many years serving America that I have felt I cannot represent the policies of an Administration of the United States. I disagree with the Administration's policies on Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, North Korea and curtailment of civil liberties in the U.S. itself. I believe the Administration's policies are making the world a more dangerous, not a safer, place. I feel obligated morally and professionally to set out my very deep and firm concerns on these policies and to resign from government service as I cannot defend or implement them."