An article in the Arts & Ideas section of today's New York Times reports, "The Bush administration has done its own brand of mix-and-match. After showing isolationist instincts -- withdrawing from an active role in the Israel-Palestinian negotiations and dismissing the idea of nation-building -- it has been sampling from the theoretical buffet. Washington acted unilaterally in Afghanistan but worked hard to create international consensus around its objective."
It's not clear that withdrawing from an active role in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is a sign of "isolationist instincts." It could be a sign of realist instincts, or of idealist instincts. It depends on what one does instead. For instance, one could say, "let's withdraw from an active role in the Israel-Palestinian negotiations and instead fund, arm and train pro-Western democratic insurgencies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Iraq and the West Bank and Gaza," and one would not be an isolationist. In other words, isolationism is not America's only alternative to negotiation with terrorists like Yasser Arafat.
It's also just not true that Washington "acted unilaterally in Afghanistan." There were British special forces on the ground with the American special forces.
Gusinsky Goof: A dispatch from Moscow in today's New York Times reports, "The travails of TV-6 uncannily resemble those of NTV, which until last summer was controlled by another sharp Kremlin critic, Vladimir Gusinsky, who is also under criminal investigation and also lives in self-imposed exile, in Spain." It's not fair to Mr. Gusinsky for the Times to report that he is "under criminal investigation" without including in the article Mr. Gusinsky's own response, or at least without making an effort to obtain such a response. It certainly wouldn't be unheard of in Russia for a "criminal investigation" to be a politically motivated effort to crush an independent news organization. As for Mr. Gusinsky's supposed residence in Spain, the New York Post reported last month that he lives in Greenwich, Connecticut.