Now that we’ve got the “Bush Knew” canard out of our collective system, the need for a thorough investigation of how the CIA and FBI missed important signals before 9/11 is clearer than ever. I found Safire’s column yesterday entirely persuasive, and Sy Hersh’s account in the current New Yorker more than hair-raising. The trouble, of course, is that even a perfectly-tuned intelligence operation could still fail to prevent one lucky – and horrendous – terrorist attack. This is the tricky psychology of warfare against terror. Success means a significant decline in terrorism. Such a decline leads people into complacency. Complacency obviously empowers more terrorism. There is no way out of this pattern in a democracy, I suppose, except an exceptionally tough leader who ignores public sentiment and presses on regardless, and who’s merciless with those beneath him who screw up. My fear with Bush is that he’s not merciless enough. Tenet and Mueller have now presided over what should clearly be resignable offenses. But Bush likes them. He can be an establishment figure even when the establishment is screwing up. He should stop opposing an independent investigation into what went wrong on his watch and Clinton’s; and get ready to fire a few of those responsible for serious lapses.
THE SURRENDER? I’ve been well lashed by readers for losing faith in this president. For the record: I haven’t. But I’m worried. I stuck with him through the muddle of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. But it seems to me incumbent on those of us who support him to let him know what the parameters of that support are. Allowing Iraq to build weapons of mass destruction which could easily be transferred to third parties to wreak terror on the West would be a gross abdication of his responsibility. I’m also worried by further news of his going soft. The Times of London has just published an account of the terrorist Club Med at Guantanamo Bay. (Non-Brits now have to pay a subscription for access to the Times’ sites, so I won’t link). Here’s the claim:
Overreacting to the initial outcry at the apparently tough conditions in the Camp X-Ray detention centre – with its images of cages, chains and kneeling prisoners, and rumours of truth drugs and sensory deprivation – the Pentagon has set up a kid-glove regime. Suspected terrorists are allowed to treat their captors with derision – lying, chanting the Koran in unison, mocking and threatening guards and throwing water at them. Americans are under orders not to react roughly. They even transport prisoners in golf carts. Guantanamo has been nicknamed “Eggshell City” by interrogators because of the political sensitivities of dealing with 384 captives from more than 30 countries, among them at least seven British citizens. Washington has become known as “Hand-Wringers’ Central” because the Pentagon worries constantly about international reactions. In the first breach of the military secrecy shrouding the interrogation process, William Tierney, an Arabic speaker who spent six weeks as an interpreter at Camp X-Ray, revealed the combination of inexperienced interrogators and stifling political correctness that has hampered efforts to extract intelligence about Al-Qaeda.
If we are being put in any danger because we are treating these detainees with the kind of concern only Guardian editorialists would muster, then we are simply not serious about this war.
BARAK’S DEBRIEFING: A fascinating essay in the New York Review of Books by revisionist historian Benny Morris. It’s essentially an elaborated interview with Ehud Barak about the failed attempt at a peace agreement at Camp David and Taba. Morris begins with comments made by former president Bill Clinton, after a classic New York Times pro-Palestinian “news analysis” by Deborah Sontag. Clinton apparently called Barak up and exploded about the Times’ reporter:
What the hell is this? Why is she turning the mistakes we [i.e., the US and Israel] made into the essence? The true story of Camp David was that for the first time in the history of the conflict the American president put on the table a proposal, based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, very close to the Palestinian demands, and Arafat refused even to accept it as a basis for negotiations, walked out of the room, and deliberately turned to terrorism. That’s the real story-all the rest is gossip.
This version of the story – deeply, deeply damning to Arafat – is now Clinton’s and Dennis Ross’s. The rest of Morris’ article persuades me – as if I needed to be persuaded – that negotiations with Arafat are useless substantively and of only marginal use if engaged in cynically (to keep the Arab dictators quiet for a while). To be fair, you should also check out the response in the New York Review by Robert Malley and Hussein Agha. I found their spinning of the Palestinian failure to negotiate seriously unconvincing. But make up your own mind.
THE CASE AGAINST JOURNALISM: Why do I find myself sympathizing with Stanley Fish? The boyfriend just got tenure at his university, so I’m not sucking up. But this little essay rang true to me. Speaking of journalism, many of you find my professed skepticism about Gary Condit’s link to the murder of Chandra Levy to be puzzling. I’m not going over all that old ground, but I have yet to see hard evidence that he impeded the investigation in any serious way. I also tend to believe that although he might well be a “jerk,” it’s precisely for the sake of jerks that we have a principle called ‘innocent unti proved guilty.’ Hate him for adultery, sleaze, bad hair, whatever. But that’s no reason to publicly suspect someone of murder, and then find it “intensely disappointing’ if the evidence points in another direction.
EVEN THE SONGS MUST BE BOYCOTTED: Swedes and Belgians are told by television presenters in the “Eurovision Song Contest,” not to vote for Israel’s entry in the competition. I guess they’re consistent.
WHO KILLED CHANDRA? An emailer on DC’s cops:
As a daily Rock Creek Park runner I’ve had several experiences with crazy homeless men living near the trails. My girlfriend (also a runner, and a 25 year-old House staffer) was chased several times (once while the man was masturbating). She called the Park Police and DC cops twice, so did I. No response, even during last summer’s Chandramania. And the men kept menacing runners. I still run the trails, but she uses the treadmill.
THE GREENS FIGHT BACK:A late flurry of pro-enivronmentalism in the Book Club, along with what Pascal might have decided about global warming, and a sci-fi parallel from Mars. This is our last posting for this book. Bjorn will be responding to specific questions later this week. Next week … a new and distinctly summery alternative.
BOYZ 2 MEN: An interesting distinction made by Garry Wills in the New York Review. In his second article on sexual abuse in the priesthood, Wills takes on the notion
that ‘pedophilia’ and ‘ephebophilia’ are somehow distinct, and that the former is always far graver than the latter:
It is said that pedophilia is limited by some modern therapists to mean sex with prepubescents. That may be useful in sorting out different forms of treatment. But that is not the meaning of pedophilia in history nor in the broader culture … Admittedly, there is a difference between sex with young people before and after puberty. In the law, of course, they are both acts of sex with a minor. But the coercion is clearly greater with a child, and the adult is more clearly pathological. Nonetheless, the harm done is not of necessity always greater. Sex with a child, heinous though it is, may be for the child part of an inexplicable world not to be connected with other realities. Child psychologists point out that children can learn so much so rapidly because they are ruthlessly efficient in dismissing information not useful to them.[10] But Michel Dorais, in his close study of abused boys, argues that abuse of adolescents is especially disorienting because it occurs at a time of challenged identity, uncertain standards, and shadowy guilt. It is all too clearly connected with other realities, mysterious in themselves … Adolescent guilt and inhibition were especially powerful for Catholic boys raised in a culture of sexual ignorance and guilt. Nuns were reluctant to speak about sex except in vaguely threatening language. Priests were mechanically judgmental in the confessional. …What is shocking in the currently revealed cases is not the number of Catholic priests who have preyed on children-though that is dismaying enough-but the repeated loosing of these predators (whatever their number) for numerous repeated acts on such a vulnerable population as Catholic boys disarmed by benighted instruction or lack of instruction on sexuality. To say that this is not so bad since it is not “real pedophilia” is a further violation and abuse of the victims.
The use of the term ephebophilia has been insisted upon by some Church conservatives for several reasons, it seems to me. It can help make the scandal seem less appalling to the general public (so helping to exculpate the hierarchy); it can help shift the onus of responsibility away from the abusers and toward the victims (arguments like “those teenagers were complicit,” etc.); and it is a way to insist that this scandal is not about the abuse of minors or the abuse of power to cover such assaults up, but is in fact a function of the dreaded homosexuals, “conspiring” in the heated language of National Review’s pop-up book ads, to destroy the Church. I’m glad Wills has helped unveil some of that agenda. Victims of abuse are victims of abuse, whether they are 15 or 5. And no amount of linguistic inventiveness can hide that fact.
The Dish 