PHILIP TERZIAN: TURKEY'S REBUFF COULD BE A BLESSING IN DISGUISE
'I admit to taking a certain melancholy pleasure in Turkey's betrayal of the Bush administration. Not because the immediate results are welcome -- it will make any war against Saddam Hussein slightly more difficult -- but because the long-term implications are worth pondering.

'Every administration has its Turkophile element: In the Clinton White House it was Richard Holbrooke; this time around it's Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Perle and Wolfowitz are motivated, to some degree, by Turkey's strategic alliance with Israel. While not exactly calling for a restoration of the Ottoman Empire -- which ruled despotically over much of modern-day Arabia -- the Perle/Wolfowitz strategy envisions a Pax Americana in the Mideast, locally administered by Israel and Turkey. That is why The New York Times' William Safire is always quick to praise the Turks, at the expense of their democratic neighbors (say, Armenia) and The Wall Street Journal regards Turkey as our closest and most treasured NATO ally.'

After this promising start, the author then fails completely to 'ponder' the most obvious implication of the Turkish decision: that American influence over Turkey, as over Europe, is visibly waning; and that Turkey in the short term and probably the long term as well is aligning itself with Europe, not the United States. America is a country militarily strong but diplomatically (and economically) weak. The 'Project for a New American Century', ie American Worldwide Hegemony, is a project doomed before it starts. In time, America could go the way of the Soviet Union: a vast military, at enormous expense, which it cannot use for any worthwhile purpose, in forward bases where it is not wanted. Most of the world's population and dynamic economies in the form of Europe, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and soon others all possess nuclear deterrents. The field of action for US military action is constricting even as it proceeds with its latest and most naked aggression.

PHILIP TERZIAN: TURKEY'S REBUFF COULD BE A BLESSING IN DISGUISE
'I admit to taking a certain melancholy pleasure in Turkey's betrayal of the Bush administration. Not because the immediate results are welcome -- it will make any war against Saddam Hussein slightly more difficult -- but because the long-term implications are worth pondering.

'Every administration has its Turkophile element: In the Clinton White House it was Richard Holbrooke; this time around it's Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. Perle and Wolfowitz are motivated, to some degree, by Turkey's strategic alliance with Israel. While not exactly calling for a restoration of the Ottoman Empire -- which ruled despotically over much of modern-day Arabia -- the Perle/Wolfowitz strategy envisions a Pax Americana in the Mideast, locally administered by Israel and Turkey. That is why The New York Times' William Safire is always quick to praise the Turks, at the expense of their democratic neighbors (say, Armenia) and The Wall Street Journal regards Turkey as our closest and most treasured NATO ally.'

After this promising start, the author then fails completely to 'ponder' the most obvious implication of the Turkish decision: that American influence over Turkey, as over Europe, is visibly waning; and that Turkey in the short term and probably the long term as well is aligning itself with Europe, not the United States. America is a country militarily strong but diplomatically (and economically) weak. The 'Project for a New American Century', ie American Worldwide Hegemony, is a project doomed before it starts. In time, America could go the way of the Soviet Union: a vast military, at enormous expense, which it cannot use for any worthwhile purpose, in forward bases where it is not wanted. Most of the world's population and dynamic economies in the form of Europe, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and soon others all possess nuclear deterrents. The field of action for US military action is constricting even as it proceeds with its latest and most naked aggression.