In a famous interview, Zhou-En Lai was asked ” What do you think were the consequences of the French Revolution?”.Zhou’s response,in classic Chinese, was “it is too early to tell”.
I bring this up to illustrate the way Asians and most Eastern people measure time and how it differs from Western concepts of time.If anything lacks immediacy and urgency, Western people think of it as inconsequential.The glacial pace at which history moves is more suited to interpretation on the time scale in Eastern terms.
In this context, whatever Mr.Bush and his minions may think,historic forces have been unleashed by their Iraq misadventure that, like a tsunami,will gather force over the next half a century or more.The results,it goes without saying, are not going to be to our liking.
While the revolution in Latin America has been achieved largely without bloodshed and US hegemony ,for all practical purposes, is dead, I would not be so sanguine about the Middle East or Asia at large.