William Pfaff: Focus on Iran and China Could Hasten American Decline - Truthdig

William Pfaff: Focus on Iran and China Could Hasten American Decline - Truthdig: The framework in which most Americans, including the foreign policy specialists, see the world has totally changed in a decade. In February 2002, the United States and Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance had just won their blitzkrieg, unseating the Taliban government of Afghanistan, and a new client government was being set in place. The Economist was to say of it a year later that optimists believed Afghanistan to be “more stable than at any time in the past 24 years.” Another war, against Iraq, was confidently being prepared to avenge the trade towers and Pentagon attacks (to which, it was to turn out, Iraq had no connection), and to create a “New Middle East.”