"A mighty alliance of moralists and progressives, suffragettes and xenophobes had legally seized the Constitution, bending it to a new purpose," writes Okrent, who was the first public editor of The Times.
But NATO is far from winning the war, and the ragged Afghan insurgents seem to have more staying power than the West's mighty alliance.As defence ministers prepare to meet in the Netherlands on October 24th, NATO itself is looking shaky.
In the real world, after a mere 11 weeks of conflict against Libya, the "mightiest alliance in the world" has run out of munitions, does not have enough aircraft to conduct its missions, and seems unable to prevail against a minor military power.
Britain's other big carrier (bmi, better known under its old name of British Midland) is a private company which keeps its results to itself; but it is in effect a subsidiary of Lufthansa, secure in the mighty Star Alliance, and robust enough to weather any downturn.
Responsible taxpayers know that it is a mighty defensive alliance that protects us from tyranny and faraway brown people, but what does it actually do?
It may be the most important such meeting since the organization — the world's mightiest military alliance — was created, in 1949.
"The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country," Mr Gates pointed out.
Furthermore, the mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country – yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the US, once more, to make up the difference.As well as a paucity of European military resources, NATO faces two other dangers, Mr Gates said.
All the strength of the world's mightiest military alliance will not amount to much if its members cannot agree when an aggressor has actually stepped over the line.Dig deeper: The threat of nuclear conflict is growing once again (March 2015) Russia's aggression is reviving NATO (August 2015).
It's quite another blithely to go after China (the world's most populous country, with one of the two largest economies and the three strongest militaries), Germany Europee's largest economy), and twenty-eight allies (in the mightiest military alliance in world history) — and all at once and all on a global stage.
Libya has been a war in which some of the Atlantic alliance's mightiest members did not participate, or did not participate with combat aircraft, like Spain and Turkey.
