The Dish

Oh, yes, the academics have only started. Here’s an account of Cornel West’s Harvard lecture Wednesday that spliced hip-hop lyrics with calls for reparations. Enjoy.

PAYBACK TIME: It looks like terrorist-appeaser Barbara Lee is going to be challenged for re-election. Too bad her opponent is almost as squishy, but, hey, it’s Oakland. The most important thing is that there is a challenge from the left that will likely focus on Lee’s refusal to counter terrorism with anything more robust than a peace-rally.

A charming inscription on a missile aimed at Afghanistan. Two questions: who allowed this message to be scrawled? Who allowed it to be photographed?

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.

And you thought I was being paranoid? The key thing to look for is whether there is any Iraqi connection to the Florida anthrax outbreak. If there is, then this war will be expanded, whatever Colin Powell wants. I had my own bio-chemical jitter today. Walking back from NPR, I saw two separate pigeons flailing in distress on the sidewalk, one block apart. A man walking nearby saw me notice and said he had contacted the public health department. Almost certainly nothing – but you don’t realize how unconsciously you’re looking out for things until you see them in front of you. I felt like I was in the opening chapters of Camus’ “La Peste.”

Well, I wanted some humor. A weird story here about how collage posters of bin Laden circulating in the Middle East somehow have Sesame Street’s Bert poking up over Osama’s shoulder. Say it ain’t so, Bert. And have you told Ernie that the relationship is finally over? Next up: Cartman backs Saddam.

An Osama limerick; Blair’s balance; a liberal agrees with me!; and other earth-shattering moments.

Smart and helpful piece by Richard Miniter in the WSJ today, taking us through the extraordinary missed opportunity of 1996 when the Clinton administration refused a Sudanese offer to hand over Osama bin Laden. Sandy Berger turned the Sudanese down. If I were him, I’d have trouble sleeping at night.

CENSORING HEROISM: The Houston Chronicle strikes a blow for p.c. censorship. In running a piece from the San Jose Mercury News about Mark Bingham’s life and death, the Chronicle took pains to remove any references to Bingham’s sexual orientation. Bingham, a gay Republican rugby player, was one of those who almost certainly wrestled the plane destined for Washington to the ground in Pennsylvania. Gay people as American heroes? Too much information for the Chronicle’s squeamish editors. I guess they’re just following the policies of the Air Force.

The saddest fact of this war so far is how luke-warm the Arab states have been. In the Gulf War, many Arab states were terrified by Saddam’s belligerence and fully backed the military alliance over a period of months. This time, there is no real unanimity and only token support after only a few days. We cannot even use the American-built Saudi bases! And the Saudis have helped foster and finance the Wahhabism that gave birth to al Qaeda. Arafat is doing what he can to avoid either being killed by his own people or siding with the losers, as he did last time. Mubarak gave a terse word of support yesterday. But no major Arab regime has given unqualified backing to the strikes in Afghanistan and the Pakistani leader is walking a tightrope. So what on earth is the point of Colin Powell’s marvelous alliance? The answer is obviously propagandistic. Any sign that this is a Western assault on a Muslim fundamentalist threat is rightly resisted in Washington because it would give bin Laden a propaganda coup and perhaps deepen the conflict unnecessarily. But the idea that we can keep this broad coalition going for much longer – or anywhere near as long as this effort will require – seems to me to be far-fetched. As each day goes by, as the public opinion of the Arab street makes itself heard more defiantly, and as the corrupt regimes in the Arab world get even more scared of the masses, something will crack. At some point, we will be forced to do something the Arab states will have to condemn: an attack on Iraq (I wish); an encounter with Hamas; a collateral destruction of something that can be made out to have some religious significance; or something simply unpredictable. What do we do then? That will be the moment of truth for Powell, Bush, Cheney and Blair. My bet is that we will continue with a fractured coalition and a widening conflict, at which point the two sides are going to look an awful lot like a Sam Huntington nightmare. No, we have no quarrel with Islam itself. No, we don’t want to unite the Arab world against the West. But we sure do have a problem with radicalized political Islam of the Wahhabist strain; further terrorist acts will only intensify our resolve; and we cannot and will not abandon Israel. Therefore some Western-Muslim conflict is close to inevitable. I think the chances of this conflict restricting itself to Afghanistan with this coalition intact are next to zero. At some point, we will have to decide whether to win this one and walk right into a clash of civilizations; or walk away and merely postpone the clash for an even bloodier future re-match. Meanwhile, our two most important allies are Britain and Russia, the last two conquerors of Afghanistan. How very reassuring and unnerving at the same time.

THE POINT OF HUMOR: During all this horror, I’ve found it a great relief to laugh. It took a while, since I spent most of the first week bawling. But my first smile came on September 12, when some friends and I rented a video of twelve Bugs Bunny classics because we just couldn’t bear reality for much longer. Cartoons transport you to another world – and Bugs’ is about as calming and uplifting as one could find. Can you imagine Bugs versus the Taliban? No contest. A few days later, we watched six episodes of AbFab, another outside-the-box spirit-lifter. And as the weeks went by, it became increasingly possible to laugh not at the event but at our responses – as the Onion triumphantly showed. As to finding humor in the conflict itself, I don’t think we’ve made enough fun of bin Laden himself yet. Like Hitler, bin Laden is not just evil, he’s ridiculous – and seeing his absurdity is a critical part of overcoming fear. Maybe it’s because I’d just seen (for the umpteenth time) “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” but that video of the turbaned maniac surrounded by characters out of central casting struck me as faintly hilarious. Where are the knights that say “Ni!” when you need them? I see no reason why we shouldn’t laugh at bin Laden’s preposterous medievalism, with that microphone perched in front of him, like a cross between Phil Donahue and the Ayatollah Khomeini. Laughter is a vital response to terror: it neutralizes fear. I remember that from the AIDS years and it kept many of us alive. Besides, one thing that separates the civilized world from these religious thugs is that we have a sense of humor. Let’s use it. And let’s start by occasionally laughing at the monstrous spectacle of these bearded beady-eyed bullies on a rock.

IRAQ WATCH: There are signs that the Bush administration gets the Iraq problem. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Negroponte, marched into the Iraqis’ U.N. office and told them to keep their heads down in the coming days and weeks. The anthrax attack in Florida might well have an Iraqi connection. As the Washington Post reports, “Czech officials said that Mohamed Atta, believed to have piloted one of the commercial airliners that slammed into the World Trade Center, met in Prague with Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani, a former consul and second secretary at the Iraqi Embassy in Prague, before traveling to the United States in June 2000. Al-Ani was expelled from the Czech Republic last April for what the Czech foreign ministry described as activities ‘incompatible with his diplomatic status.'” There’s no sign yet that we’re preparing an attack on Iraq, but every sign that this is still an option – if one that Colin Powell seems sure to oppose. Lets hope events make this second phase possible; and that Colin Powell sees the light.

CORRECTION: Only one poor fellow has died of anthrax in Florida.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “A further reason for my hatred of National Socialism and other ideologies is quite a primitive one. I have an aversion to killing people for the fun of it. What the fun is, I did not quite understand at the time, but in the intervening years the ample exploration of revolutionary consciousness has cast some light on this matter. The fun consists in gaining a pseudo-identity through asserting one’s power, optimally by killing somebody – a pseudo-identity that serves as a substitute for the human self that has been lost.” – Eric Voegelin, “Autobiographical Reflections,” (dictated 1973, published 1989).

A NEW WORLD ORDER CTD.: Tunku Varadarajan has a good little piece on the complementarity of the British and American expeditionary forces in the Wall Street Journal today. He’s also right about the extraordinary usefulness of the British alliance right now – diplomatically, rhetorically and militarily. But I’d go one step further. It seems to me that crises like the current one tell you something about underlying geo-political realities. One of those realities is that Britain is now and has been for the better part of a century far closer in culture, interests, and economics to the United States than to Continental Europe. When push comes to shove, the British elites know this, use this, rely on this. But in calmer times, they gravitate toward the often tortuous goal of immersion in a pan-European super-state. In Tony Blair’s speech last week, you saw this tension in full force. On the one hand, he gave one of the most pro-American speeches in the history of British politics. In the same breath, he reiterated his support for British entry into the euro. What gives? In the aftermath of this war, one thing that could and should be revived is an attempt to add more political heft to what Churchill understood as the deep connection of the English-speaking
peoples. Why not counter the lure of the euro by inviting Britain to join NAFTA? Instead of pegging the pound to the euro, why not link it to the dollar? The EU will of course object. But in some ways, NAFTA membership for Britain would be a great way to call the EU’s bluff. If the point of the EU is in part free trade, why does an expansion of free trade between an EU member and the U.S. represent a threat to anyone? If Britain’s membership in NAFTA were to lead to a further opening up of European markets to Americans and vice-versa, what’s the harm? Except to French hopes that Europe will eventually become not a vital partner for America, but a menacing rival.

SCHEER MADNESS: An overdue hit-job on the insufferable and mendacious Los Angeles Times columnist, Robert Scheer, by the often sharp and fair website, Spinsanity. Ben Fritz is particularly acute in pointing out how Scheer first invented the notion that the United States had given $43 million in aid to the Taliban and so was hypocritical in turning on the mullahs in Kabul and Kandahar after 9/11. In fact, that $43 million was food aid, dispensed through the U.N. and non-governmental agencies, bypassing the Islamo-fascist leadership. Well, we all make mistakes. What’s truly troubling about Scheer is that even after this was revealed, he continued disseminating the lie. In fact, he larded it up, hedged it with new spin, and fomented its repetition in such places as The Nation, The New Yorker, The Denver Post and Salon. Read this piece and never read Scheer again.

Just an update to apologize for the absence of the Dish for a few hours. My bag was searched at Dulles; it was emptied and taken away and then returned. I assumed they put my laptop back in it. They hadn’t. I found out it was missing on the airplane to Chicago. Happily, it was not detonated. I was told I could pick up my trusty Dell Inspiron when I came back through Dulles – and used the computer of a friend of my boyfriend’s while I was in Chi-town. But when I returned, the police station and the Lost and Found were – of course – closed. Today, I hired a Dulles courier to track the thing down for me, and after shuttling between various offices for half a day, he found it. Anyway, it’s a boring story and I need to get a back-up. But the lesson is: traveling seems to be extremely safe but incredibly boring and frustrating. It’s a worthwhile trade-off, but I’m sure glad to get my laptop back. Normal service should resume shortly.

It seems certain that two Americans have now died in a terrorist biological attack in Florida. The first case of anthrax inhalation never struck me as a fluke. The second renders such a benign possibility extinct. Just as chilling as the attack itself is the fact that it was directed at a tabloid paper which has recently run the usual tabloid fare on Osama bin Laden. Who did this? I hope the current somewhat complacent attitude of the authorities begins to shift as we contemplate the next round of terrorist warfare on Americans. In some ways, a repeat of the massive toll in New York City is unnecessary. Random mini-attacks everywhere in the country could actually be more effective in creating the widespread panic and fear that al Qaeda obviously wants to foster. The FBI needs to throw as much effort into tracking down these suspects as into bombarding military targets in Afghanistan. And the perpetrators should not be treated as regular criminals with the usual rights. They are military forces, conducted by a military enemy. If captured, they need to be put in military detention centers, not regular prisons. We have to resist at all costs the trap of terrorists, which is that they can be treated as mere criminals while conducting a war.

LARKIN ON BIOLOGICAL TERRORISM:
“Caught in the center of a soundless field
While hot inexplicable hours go by
What trap is this? Where were its teeth concealed?
You seem to ask.
I make a sharp reply,
Then clean my stick. I’m glad I can’t explain
Just in what jaws you were to suppurate:
You may have thought things would come right again
If you could only keep quite still and wait.”
– Myxomatosis, by Philip Larkin.

DID OSAMA CONFESS?: Bin Laden’s nauseating propaganda video seemed to me to come extremely close to acknowledging that he was indeed behind the massacre of September 11. Would he hail a “vanguard” of Muslim warriors if he were not directing it? If he were still trying to play the victim, would he not add to his condemnation of our initial attacks on “innocent” countries another assertion of his own innocence? I would think so. I was also struck by the intensely religious nature of his address. As I argued in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, we ignore the religious dimension of this war at our peril. The enemy is not Islam as such, but fundamentalism. And Islamic fundamentalism is of a particularly brutal kind.

LETTERS: Riffing on Caligula and Claudius; is Heidegger at fault?; leaving the far far left alone.

COLUMBUS DAY: The lite dish today is because of the holiday. I’m traveling back to DC from Chicago. Wish me luck.

SALON ON CLINTON’S FAILURES: Interesting interview with a special forces expert, Mark Bowden, in Clinton-supporting Salon magazine. Here’s the relevant passage:
“Q: Were they targeting Osama bin Laden under the Clinton administration’s executive order to track him down and, if possible, capture him?
A: The Clinton administration’s executive order authorized drawing up plans to go after bin Laden, meaning that his administration allowed the planning of an operation, training for it and putting special forces into position in that part of the world waiting for the green light, but it didn’t authorize the action to capture him. Someone’s conscience must weigh heavily that they didn’t authorize that mission. I expect that after the initial shock of our reactions to the Sept. 11 bombing wears off there will be a serious evaluation of who made the decision not to go ahead with this. It doesn’t take a genius to know that something bad would come of this. There were people preaching exactly this sort of attack. People will be asking a lot about policy failures. It’s not like we didn’t know that Osama bin Laden was planning to do something awful; he told us that he would do it and started doing it. He bombed our embassies, bombed the USS Cole and our forces in Saudi Arabia. Looking back we’re going to have to ask why we allowed this to happen: Was it that they thought they couldn’t have pulled it off or were inept?”
So when I raise this troubling idea, it’s a function of my pathological hatred of Clinton. What excuse do the Clintonites have for someone with expertise in this area in a left-leaning magazine?