Optimism Rediscovered

LET THE over-exuberance recommence! Washington is in the grip of a series of mood swings. An insanely negative tone prevailed in the war coverage here at the beginning of this week, but now it is the hawks who feel justified in gloating. If you had read the American press last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, you would have thought the media analysts were covering Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. There were ludicrous Vietnam comparisons, rampant quagmire forebodings and learned deconstructions of What Went Wrong.