Al Qaeda fights on in Afghanistan; New York Times – Saudi Arabia “peace plan” suddenly not in spotlight; Riordan up Walnut Creek; Blair pledges to take war to Baghdad.
REALITY CHECK: Terrifying news from Time magazine and the Washington Post about the possibility – I’d say probability – that al Qaeda terrorists may soon have the capability of detonating a nuclear or dirty nuclear bomb in a major American city. In the words of the Post,
The consensus government view is now that al Qaeda probably has acquired the lower-level radionuclides strontium 90 and cesium 137, many thefts of which have been documented in recent years. These materials cannot produce a nuclear detonation, but they are radioactive contaminants. Conventional explosives could scatter them in what is known as a radiological dispersion device, colloquially called a “dirty bomb.” The number of deaths that might result is hard to predict but probably would be modest. One senior government specialist said “its impact as a weapon of psychological terror” would be far greater.
This war is not over. It has barely begun. That’s why I took umbrage last week at the usual Democratic Party gripes about the direction of the war. Tom Daschle has argued that we don’t know what the exact goals are, or why the war is being expanded. What planet is Daschle on? The state of the union address was quite explicit. The aim of this war is now what it always has been – to defend the United States and other free countries from massive acts of war threatened against us, including the use of weapons of mass destruction. How is that unclear?
CHARACTER AND THE PRESIDENCY: “Ambling Into History,” released from embargo tomorrow, is our next book club pick. It’s the new campaign book from the New York Times’ Frank Bruni, about the nature of candidate Bush before he was allegedly transformed by September 11. The book is already the buzz of Washington, criticized by Bushies, defended by some journalists, revealing heretofore unknown details of the president’s rambunctious frat-boy persona on the campaign trail. (Don’t worry that it’s only released tomorrow. If you order today, it will be shipped from tomorrow onward.) Why pick it? I think the conundrum of Bush – of who he really is – is still one of the most disputed questions in our public life, and one we need to debate further. Bruni was Bush’s favorite campaign journalist and easily the least anti-Bush reporter of the liberal press. He has credibility. And the questions he raises are good ones. Is Bush’s wild past reconcilable with his sober present? Can a jokester lead a war? More broadly, how do character and the presidency interact?
CHARACTER AND THE PRESS: The book is also about the press and how it covers, invents, distorts and condescends to politics. This is a constant theme of this site and this book is as good a way as any to investigate it. How did the press under-estimate Bush before September 11? How close to reality is the current practice of campaign coverage? And of course, the advantage of this book club format is that you get to talk back. Turn the tables on the author. If the book enrages or amuses you, you get a chance to grill Bruni directly on his methods and arguments and facts. If you think he’s biased, here’s your chance to expose it. Of course, you may well decide to direct the debate in another direction altogether. Go ahead. Make my month. On a practical note, this time round we’ll be increasing levels of reader participation and structuring the discussion around themes, rather than chapters. And don’t worry about getting the book in time. Amazon has been warned – and the discussion starts March 20, to give everyone a chance to read it before the debate begins. I’ve already started – and it’s a very lively, even gripping, read so far. So join in. Click here to buy the book and thereby join the club. (British readers click here.) See you for the discussion in a couple of weeks.
THE CHURCH’S NEW LOW: I got a distressing email yesterday from a priest friend of mine. Recently ordained, he no longer wears his clerical clothes on the street because of routine abuse. A fellow priest he knows recently got spat on in New York City; another was asked, “What are you up to, father? Trawling for little boys?” This kind of story breaks my heart. What the child-abusing priests have done is not simply commit a heinous crime; they have smeared by association many, many other good priests. That is Cardinal Law’s legacy – and it is the present pope’s as well. Anyone who believes that this policy of defending and sheltering child-molesters was a local or limited phenomenon has no idea how the Church works. This was a policy organized in detail, and approved at every level of the church hierarchy. Rome knew. Of course they knew. And they knew that what they were doing was evil.
IT GETS WORSE: And what is Rome’s reaction? So far, if this New York Times article is accurate, the conservative cabal at the heart of the Vatican intends to find a scapegoat. That scapegoat is the gay clergy. Here’s the relevant passage from the Times:
The conservatives shift the focus elsewhere, saying that sexual abuse cases in the church mainly involve teenage boys, not young children, and for that reason they say the priesthood should become less welcoming to gays. Priests who said this made clear they were not suggesting that gays were any more likely to be pedophiles. But they said most of the sex cases being investigated did not fit the classic definition of pedophilia. With this in mind, Pope John Paul II’s spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, questioned whether ordinations of gays were even valid. “People with these inclinations just cannot be ordained,” Dr. Navarro-Valls said in an interview, citing canon law but wading into what he knew was sensitive territory. “That does not imply a final judgment on people with homosexuality,” added Dr. Navarro-Valls, a Spanish layman who is a psychiatrist by training. “But you cannot be in this field.”
Charming, huh? Rather than tackle its own culpability for protecting child-molesters, the Vatican decides to use the ancient slur of associating pedophiles with homosexuals to deflect blame, at the same time smearing the many excellent, holy and dedicated gay priests. This is simply disgusting and enraging. And the fomenting of this bigotry – the deployment of it as a weapon to protect its own sordid record – is yet another sign that something is clearly rotten at the heart of the contemporary church. Its offense is rank. It smells to heaven. After reading this smear, I couldn’t go to mass today. How can I worship at a church which propagates hate and bigotry to defend itself from moral responsibility? How can anyon
e?
MORE VATICAN SPIN: Another pernicious trope from the reactionaries is the notion that the pedophile explosion was a function of liberalizing attitudes in the Church after the Second Vatican Council. Reliable Vatican-defender Richard John Neuhaus tells the Boston Herald that “(The) counterculture had made significant inroads in the lives of the churches, including the Catholic Church,” in the 1960s, and that’s the origin of the pedophile crisis. This will be part of the Vatican’s defensive conservative crouch on this issue. It’s nonsense. As the Herald piece points out, the majority of pedophiles in a Boston seminary were enrolled before liberalizing attitudes prevailed and in a very conservative environment. The proportion of convicted pedophiles peaks in 1960 – before Vatican II – and in 1968 (from a far smaller population) – not exactly proof of Neuhaus’s case. As far back as 1960, the proportion of pedophiles in that seminary was seven times the average for the general population. Blame that on liberalization, if you can. But the problem goes far further back and far deeper than an easy ideological assertion.
BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “[T]here is still scant evidence to suggest that [president Bush] condones the idea of a free press.” – Frank Rich, New York Times, suggesting the president disagrees with the First Amendment.
QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “[P]olitico-literary intellectuals are not usually frightened of mass opinion. What they are frightened of is the prevailing opinion within their own group. At any given moment there is always an orthodoxy, a parrot-cry which must be repeated, and in the more active section of the Left the orthodoxy of the moment is anti-Americanism. I believe part of the reason … is the idea that if we can cut our links with the United States we might succeed in staying neutral in the case of Russia and America going to war … There is also the rather mean consideration that the Americans are not really our enemies, that they are unlikely to start dropping atomic bombs on us or even to let us starve to death, and therefore we can safely take liberties with them if it pays to do so.” – George Orwell, prophetic again, from his review, “In Defence of Comrade Zilliacus”.
BUCKLEY ON BROCK: A nice riff on liberal piety.
The Dish 