“Al Qaeda is not winning the war, but we could still lose it if we fail to unite”

Via A Fistful of Euros, here is a refreshingly clear statement of basic common sense on Al Qaeda, Europe and the eerily and memorably misprinted “Untied States”, from (it says here) “a senior adviser to IFRI, the French Institute of International Relations”. Being a liberal democrat, rather than a Marxist, the writer seems, rather naively, to take the much-vaunted differences between the US parties at face value, and also indulges in the fantasy that “the world is not a safer place” as a result of the liberation of Iraq, as if (to cite only one set of examples) the dictatorships in Libya, Syria and Iran were still behaving now exactly as they did up to March 2003. But it’s worth reading even so.
The posts here, by Scott Martens, a stalwart of A Fistful of Euros, are also well worth reading, but we’re not sure what to call the site they appear on: a sub-blog? a sidebar blog? a blogstra? a blogplement? (Ouch! Even we’re appalled by that last one.)