Former UK cabinet minister Clare Short says the United States should just shut up and let the United Nations handle things. And in the great tradition of Neville Chamberlain, she says that by fighting terrorism, we’re only generating more of it: What future for the UN? (Hat tip: NC.)

The United States is now, of course, the world’s only great power.

Its economic and military might is massively greater than that of any other country, but too few Americans seem to understand that American power cannot make America safe.

If America continues to throw its weight around and to bully or punish anyone who gets in its way, it will stoke up more and more resentment and hatred across the world.

And this atmosphere acts as a recruiting sergeant for terrorism - the very enemy against which the post-11 September focus of American attention is directed.

People like Short seem to think that if we’d taken the punishment we were due on September 11, and gone into an extended spell of self-loathing and self-blaming, the world would be a much better, safer place.