But it is in the foreign affairs arena that a sea change has really taken place. It now does not appear as if the UN has a great deal substantive to contribute under any circumstances; NATO is being returned to its regional role by the U.S. itself, over and above the EU tendencies toward a nascent force de frappe that seems, at the moment, more frappe than force. Recognition of U.S. "unilateralism" (however inappropriate that term actually is) makes many uncomfortable but it was always there under the surface.
I don't believe the war on terror is necessarily limited to its Islamist manifestation. This is something just a bit wider in scope than that. Terrorism per se as an instrument of state policy has developed as a non-apocalyptic means of surrogate confrontation as an outgrowth of a MAD-gripped Cold War; when Bush refers to an "Axis of Evil" he is referring to states who have adopted it outside that arena as a means of carrying on war as a state policy without crossing the threshold into a formal, all-out response. What changed on 9/11 was that the threshold was crossed, and the all-out response in Afghanistan (from the Taliban's point of view) was something new - that government was put to an end where such a response was not possible in the status quo ante WTC. The world changed there.
What disturbs most people who were comfortable with the lower level of military activity in that previous status quo is that the threshold of response seems to have been lowered without being strictly identified. But the ability of terrorism to stay sub-threshold was one of its signal characteristics - it was always designed to constitute pinpricks short of that threshold. Now the latter is blurred, and it isn't just the terrorists who are uneasy at this.
But that comfort level was always a bit of a sham - it was a demand on the part of the world community for a country possessing power to self-limit it in the interests of a "fairness" that was purely illusory. It was the demand that a country attacked endure a low level of damage indefinitely if the rules were to be abided by. One of the reasons Israel has excited such fury on the part of many of the onlookers to her conflict is that she has decided that those rules imperil her state were they to be abided by and has declined to do so. That fury writ large is now being heaped on the United States in the person of Bush for doing precisely the same thing.
The pre- 9/11 unimaginable actions became real or at least possible. Lots of decent people in the world who oppose us still don't really believe that the threshold was overstepped. An exercise in hypothetical before 9/11 is now a possible reality Bush and Co must deal with.
It's like people who are saying that if somebody resorts to terrorism and suicide bombing, it's so horrific, that they must have been really pushed to it by their miserable circumstances. These apologists don't understand that it was a calculated step, exploiting somebody misery for sure, but a cold political calculation that brought real political benefits. Decent people do project their decency onto others, terrorists are smart enough to count on this.
The whole situation is like that frog in boiling water story. The temperature is rising slowly in Israel, so they continue to endure. It shot up once here, so it was noticed. But because its dropping here, its like back to pre 9/11 mentality for many. Fascinatingly short memory.
What disturbs most people who were comfortable with the lower level of military activity in that previous status quo is that the threshold of response seems to have been lowered without being strictly identified.
In my conversations with the overseas guys, and reading some foreign stuff, I see that they are much more scarred by the seemingly unchecked power of the United States than by any terrorists. Some truly believed that Bush presented bigger threat to the world than Saddam. Without a pause, they simultaneously want and don't want USA to be the world policeman. They were OK with threatening Iraq with force, but ONLY if we did not really planned to go ahead with the invasion. If had only one magic wish granted to wipe off just one country from the face of the Earth they would sooner erase us than Iraq, or North Korea. It was amazing.