Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you're killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You'll simply outrage them and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing.

Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war in Afghanistan, unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Sovereignty is a word that is used often but it has really no specific meaning. Sovereignty today is nominal. Any number of countries that are sovereign are sovereign only nominally and relatively.

One has to be willing to face the fact that what has transpired in Iraq is not exactly a very successful exercise.

Hegemony is as old as mankind.

Marxism represents a further vital and creative stage in the maturing of man's universal vision... The nation-state is gradually yielding its sovereignty... More intensive efforts to shape a new world monetary structure will have to be undertaken.