Jonathan Schell was on charlie rose again just now &

[moof]

pointed out that the two largest defeats of empire in recent times were accomplished without the use of force. He was talking about Gandhi ridding India of the Brits and the Soviet Union disolving without "breaking a single pane of glass". He also talked about two other very interesting thoughts, the first being that he thinks that at some point the continued presense of U.S. forces in Iraq may as in VIETNAM start to make the situation deteriorate faster by staying than by leaving. The last deep thought was that if democracy has to be implemented at the point of a barrel it seems to him that this hurts the image of democracy in the eyes of the world.

Apologies to Jonathan for the tortured paraphrasing.