I wrote my weekly Sunday Times column on the Richard Clarke matter last week, because my editors wanted it and because it was the only big story in Washington. And it will obviously continue. But I’m a little mystified by the furore. I never believed that either the Clinton or the pre-9/11 Bush administration took al Qaeda seriously enough; the attempts by both administrations to exonerate themselves strike me as strained. The Clinton administration deserves more scrutiny because it was in control for eight years, rather than eight months, but no one can claim with a straight face that the Bushies saw what was coming; or did enough to stop it. All that should be exposed as thoroughly as possible. But what matters now in a political year is how the Bushies responded afterwards; and, to my mind, they did about as good a job as possible. The way some people are now talking, you’d think the White House hadn’t targeted Afghanistan and al Qaeda before Saddam. But they went to al Qaeda’s base first, taking the war to the enemy patiently and determinedly – with enormous success first against the Taliban and then against Saddam. Millions are now liberated from unspeakable tyranny; reform is afoot in the Middle East; al Qaeda has been seriously wounded. Not a bad start. But I agree with the Washington Post yesterday that the more worrying sign is the way the White House has responded. They have been close to hysterical, defensive to an absurd degree and therefore unpersuasive. Their response to Clarke evokes far more doubts about their pre-9/11 conduct than anything Clarke could have mustered by himself. More evidence that they’re losing it. I think they realize they’re in trouble and don’t know quite how to right themselves. Hence the policy lurches – from Mars to marriage to steroids. The only inference I can draw is that their internal polling data is even more worrisome than the external stuff.
MARRIAGE BIGOTRY: No, I’m not referring to same-sex marriage, but to the inter-racial kind. It still evokes all sorts of prejudice and stereotypes, and if you don’t believe me, read what Boston Herald columnist, Mike Barnicle, just said about the marriage between former Defense secretary Bill Cohen and African-American Janet Langhart. It’s 2004 and we’re still obsessed with “Mandingo”? The deeper point is that inter-racial marriages are often sexualized to a degree others are not. All the complexities, banalities, duties and responsibilities that marriage entails are reduced to a sex fantasy between a black woman and a white man (and often even more so when it’s a black man and a white woman). Reducing people’s relationships to mere sex is a subtle way of dehumanizing them. And that’s one analogy between the deep animus toward inter-racial love and that toward same-sex love that rings as true today as ever.
The Dish 