Superb column by Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post today highlighting both Iraq’s continued sponsorship of terrorists and the Clinton administration’s fecklessness in coming to grips with it in the past. The CIA is directly responsible for much of this, which is why it is still a mystery to me how George Tenet has clung to his post. From Bush’s press conference, I gleaned little about the administration’s plans for Iraq, except that Bush is keeping his options open and refusing to pick between the factions in his own administration. My hunch is that there will indeed be action against Iraq, but that it will be covert and we may never know about it. That solves Bush’s political problem, deploys his favorite method of secrecy, and keeps his commitment to a serious war.
WAR AND RELIGION: Some of you emailed me to ask why I had written a while back in an aside that I didn’t think much of David Forte’s “bromides” about Islamic fundamentalism. I hope my piece in the New York Times Magazine helps explain why. Frankie Foer does a good job on Forte in the new TNR. Forte gets his facts wrong, and his views of Islam seem strained through his own (and Bush’s) unfortunate belief that faith – any faith – is somehow better than none. (In my view, atheists are far less politically dangerous than fundamentalists of any stripe.) Forte’s also close to many of the theocons on the right who have done their best to blur the clear distinctions between Church and State that make the United States such a unique experiment in world history. Such theocons have far too much clout, in my view, in the Bush White House, and may be blurring some of our vision in the current conflict with Islamo-fascism. Michael Novak does the same thing in National Review, in an excruciating call to arms for a religious America. No, Mr. Novak. America is politically a secular country. Only civilly is it a deeply religious one. And those two facts are deeply connected. It’s clear that there are some on the religious right – and I don’t blame them – who are rattled by the recent exposure of what fundamentalism can achieve if welded to political power. One small silver lining from Osama bin Laden is to remind us of the evil of the fusion of religion and politics – a fusion that the theocons keep wanting to dilute.
FEAR ITSELF: I suppose the Department of Justice had good reason to warn us all of credible threats of imminent terrorist attacks in the next few days. But I wonder what the true rationale is. Giving this kind of generalized warning scares people in ways the terrorists actively want. And for what? Since there’s been no specific warning about any specific target, there’s not much we can do to prevent it or prepare for it. We know we’re threatened. Vigilance is necessary. But terrifying people about completely amorphous threats seems to me to be more about covering the government’s ass than actually doing any tangible good. I was feeling fine until this evening. And my low-level anxiety tonight is not going to help anyone. In future, the warnings should be specific or none at all.
The Dish 