As the war in Iraq enters a less predictable guerrilla phase (with organized attacks on the US military and its allies on the increase even after President Bush declared a unilateral cessation of combat on May 1, 2003), here is an array of perspectives and opinions. For example, [url=http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bc5d8t%2413vp%241%40pencil.math.missouri.edu&oe=utf-8&output=gplain]the historian Eric Hobsbawm compares the US desire to export democracy to the imperial desires of the French under Napoleon and the Soviets under Lenin[/url]:[quote]On the other hand the US, like revolutionary France and revolutionary Russia, is a great power based on a universalist revolution -- and therefore based on the belief that the rest of the world should follow its example, or even that it should help liberate the rest of the world. Few things are more dangerous than empires pursuing their own interest in the belief that they are doing humanity a favour.[/quote] [url=http://groups.google.com/group/alt.impeach.bush/browse_thread/thread/f2cbb29002b2c894/b13d0d765f53f50%23b13d0d765f53f50]Search for weapons of mass destruction: why the spooks are angry[/url] [url=http://www.brook.edu/views/op-ed/ohanlon/20030619.htm]Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Future of the US military[/url] [url=https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/iraqcrisis/2003-May/000145.html]Unesco lengthens list of looted art in Iraq[/url] [url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A8235-2003May18¬Found=true]Punishing Democracy[/url]