What's missing?

This Los Angeles Times column by someone named Rosa Brooks is so utterly ridiculous that I almost hesitate to link to it. You can tell how intellectually bankrupt it's going to be simply by taking note of what's missing from the opening of the piece.

THINGS FELL APART so quickly.

At the beginning of this millennium, the Cold War was over, the prosperous United States was the sole remaining superpower and global opinion was largely sympathetic to U.S. aims. In the wake of brutal ethnic wars in Central Europe and Africa, the international community had forged a new determination to prevent conflict and atrocities. The volatile Middle East was quiet, and the world seemed headed toward stability rather than chaos.

Only six years later, things couldn't be more different. The Bush administration's tunnel-vision approach to foreign policy has pushed the U.S. and the world into a devastating tailspin of conflict without end.

Hmmmmmmmmm...it seems like something is missing from that equation. Something big. Something that I seem to distantly recall from the early autumn of, say, 2001.

Oh, don't get Ms. Brooks wrong. She does mention 9/11, but only to mention that afterward, "the world was on our side, and we had a unique opportunity to turn tragedy into triumph, to strengthen the alliances and global institutions that have long sustained American preeminence," and that "We wasted that opportunity." But of course. I have to deduct points from Ms. Brooks, though, for her failure to use the word "squandered."

I'd fisk the rest of it, but the bulk of the column is such a series of shopworn lies, cliches, and talking points that I'm beginning to suspect that she cribbed most of it from the placards being waved at an International ANSWER rally. It's really that bad.