Islam and the West

They say nothing will ever be as it was before but in fact ancient myths and memories are blending with the tragedy and madness of the present.

The first World War of the Third Millennium features America, the modern Tower of Babel, against Afghanistan and its caves; the U.S. national security adviser Condoleeza Rice, who symbolizes racial integration against Osama bin Laden, a modern "Old Man of the Mountain." It is a war made up of thousands of wars.

Meanwhile, we are witnessing an international avalanche of analysis, rhetoric and stereotypes and two irreconcilable worlds, united by their reciprocal crises -- the technocrats of the West who think they are God but cannot manage the economy, the environment and social relations, and the fundamentalists of Islam who yearn for the world to be managed by a God who has not delivered them from poverty and isolation.

-- La Repubblica, Rome