USS Cole comes to Lebanon

  “Once, I remember, we came upon a French ‘man-of-war,’ senselessly firing cannon shots into the African jungle,” narrates Marlow in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” his novel about madness and power in 19th Century Africa. “In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech — and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight.” Conrad’s description of the pointlessness of Western naval power against the impassivity of a continent came to mind with Washington’s announcement in February that it was sending warships to patrol the Levantine coast in a less than subtle message to its opponents in the