Such strange paradoxes lately: Sen. Clinton warning the President that he can’t use force in Iran without a Senate vote–wise, perhaps, but precisely a protocol not followed when (she and) Bill Clinton used quite a bit of force against Milosevic without Congressional or UN approval.

And then Putin damning us for Iraq-apparently for being too forceful (and unsuccessful), while other Russians were at the same time bragging that their brutal and bloodthirsty decimation of Islamists in Chechnya had apparently worked.

Or the Europeans cautioning about America pressing the Iranians too hard, while the Austrians sell them sniper rifles.

In the recent issues of the Economist and Newsweek, there is the usual script about Iran: Bush is playing the cowboy and might take us over the edge; then followed by the pros/cons of inaction versus action; then their concluding throw-up-the-hands dilemma about what to do with these bad/worse choices–which brings them back to the exact position that the caricatured cowboy Bush is currently occupying.

After speaking and traveling frequently, I’ve notice among the European and American elites, there is a new sort of greeting, almost religious in nature, like the prefacing “God is Great,” or an Asian bow, or a Western handshake, that must introduce conversation or break the ice. And it is something like “Of course, I hate Bush” or “Bush is the problem”; then, upon examination, that formality is followed by almost no reason or evidence, but a few moments of a highly agitated emotional state, and then things can calm down and go back to normal…