Speaking of spending too much bandwidth on politics, it's very ... interesting ... trying to work while listening to the BBC feed of the war debate in the House of Commons. It *is* way more entertaining than the US debate was, at least.

Yeah, I caught some of the British debate this morning. It was interesting.

Anyway, my extensive comments on the Zakaria article are here if anybody cares.

I agree that it's a must-read, but ultimately differ with Zakaria's conclusions.

And can you waste too much bandwidth on politics?

If your purpose is merely to complain about the world and try to make yourself look smart, then yes, it is possible to expend too much bandwidth on politics.

Fortunately, since from what I've seen, we all (those of us partaking in the blogs I've read, at least) actually care about what's going on in terms of how we can help make the world a better place, I think we're making good use of the bandwidth.

The world’s full of political blogs; I didn’t intend to start another one.

Anyway, comments on your comments here, Derek. I didn’t intend to imply that I agree with Zakaria’s analysis point by point, but he does capture exactly what my fears are as we go into the 21st century.

One way of putting it — more relevant, perhaps, to the viewers at home — would be that there’s two sides to the terrorism equation: the supply side and the demand side. The War On Evil addresses only the supply side, and in a way that is thoroughly counterproductive on the demand side.

Another way of putting it would be that I don’t want to live in a world where the US is to the rest of the world what the USSR was to the Eastern Bloc, no matter how much it may benefit me materially.