Asia Can Afford to Turn Its Back
President Bush came back from Asia and it may as well have been South America, for all the respect he got. Sorry ‘bout that, Dubya, but the rest of the world sees you falling apart at home and it makes them bold. They were bold in South America and you came away with nothing. Now they are bold in Japan and Korea, China and Mongolia and you’ve come home with nothing from that trip as well.
There’s still a terrorist game out there, but it’s suddenly being played on Asia’s and the Middle East’s terms because no one need play the ‘reacting to Bush’ game now that it’s no longer being played in America. Not even in his own party. He’s slipped on the kennel floor and all the hounds are having at him while he’s down.
Which is strange and not so strange at the same time
In the middle of Bill Clinton’s worst times, when Monica was all that held any newspaper’s interest in America, I remember Vaclav Havel and Nelson Mandela standing on either side of him at a press conference. The world’s two leadi…