Gene Lyons: Has Bush learned anything yet?

For several reasons, the most salient historical fact of the 20 th century has been lost on most Americans. Oddly, it’s one our revolutionary forebears would have been quicker to recognize: The age of colonial empires is over. Short of a willingness to massacre hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians from the air, better armed and technologically superior foreign powers can no longer dictate terms to any but the most obscure and impoverished Third World countries. It’s no accident that the beginning of the end of European gunboat diplomacy coincided with the invention of radio, spreading news and nationalist propaganda cheaply and fast. Satellite TV and the Internet have made communication universal, instantaneous and “interactive,” enabling leaders as different as Nelson Mandela and Osama bin Laden to influence millions. The advantages of the Internet for fomenting and coordinating rebellions and conspiracies are obvious. The techniques of guerrilla warfare, perfected in nationalistic uprisings from Dublin in 1916 to Baghdad in 2007, pushed the French out of Algeria and Vietnam, the U. S. out of Vietnam, and the Russians out of Afghanistan. Cheap, portable, easily concealed weapons like the AK-47, rocket-propelled grenades and shoulder-fired anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles, not to mention remote-controlled IEDs—improvised explosive devices—have made controlling subject populations too brutal and costly for advanced democracies to tolerate.