The mail.(Letter to the Editor)

When it comes to foreign relations, TAE has simply "gone over the top."

In "It Will Come Down to Fortitude" (September), Karl Zinsmeister states that our post-9/11 adventures have transformed the world. Afghanistan is a "democracy." Iraq is on its way to becoming one. Palestine will be transformed through the cutting off of subsidies.

At the risk of being thought to be a combination of "newscaster, computer yuppie, professor, and high income soccer mom," let me declare that each and all of these propositions are unmitigated rubbish. Afghanistan is not, has never been, and will not become, a democracy. We entered it to root out terrorist training camps, and in the elimination of it as a sanctuary our interest in it begins and ends. It is now, outside Kabul, in the hands of its traditional warlords.

Iraq is not going to be a democracy. The three or four successor states that will emerge from the current confusion are likewise unlikely to be secular states.

Any "transformation" in Palestine is due to the action of the grim reaper, not to our foreign policy.

Nor did "everything change with 9/11." Nothing changed with 9/11. Ever since the dawn of the atomic age, there has been worry about terrorism or surprise aggression by rogue states.

Let us be patriotic and vigilant by all means. But let us not grudge the prisoners of Guantanamo decent mattresses, slings for their Korans, and the too-long-delayed administrative hearings.