Will Marshall on Confronting Jihad

The head of the Progessive Policy Institute takes on the Jihadist menace:

Some foreign policy analysts dismiss the severity of the jihadist threat, which they believe the White House has exaggerated for political reasons.

That's a big mistake. Although the ranks of hardcore terrorists may be small, the number of Islamist sympathizers, theorists, enablers, and potential recruits appears to be growing. Saudi Arabia has been particularly active in building the infrastructure that supports extremism, recycling oil revenues to the tune of $75 billion over the last two decades to spread Wahhabi fundamentalism around the world.

Instead of minimizing the jihadist threat, Americans should study the jihadist ideology. We need the equivalent of the Cold War's Kremlinologists -- jihadologists who can help U.S. policymakers understand what motivates extremism and devise better strategies for diminishing its appeal to Muslims wherever they live.

Bush's "war on terror" has focused too narrowly on terrorists' means rather than their ideas. Reza Aslan, an American Muslim, argues in With All Our Might that the president seems oblivious to the context from which jihadist extremism springs. The movement arises from a civil war raging within Islam. It pits reformers seeking an accommodation with modernity against fundamentalists determined to rid Islam of all modern and corrupting ideas.

"The simple truth is that the United States has a national security interest in the outcome of the Islamic Reformation currently under way throughout the Muslim world," Aslan writes. "It must therefore do whatever it can to tip the balance of power away from the extremists and back to the massive yet voiceless majority who are as much victims of jihadism as is the West."

Yet Bush's excessively militarized response to terrorism and his reductive, good-versus-evil rhetoric has played into the jihadists' strategy of framing their struggle as an irreconcilable conflict between Islam and the "crusader" West.
"The simple truth is that the United States has a national security interest in the outcome of the Islamic Reformation currently under way throughout the Muslim world," Aslan writes. "It must therefore do whatever it can to tip the balance of power away from the extremists and back to the massive yet voiceless majority who are as much victims of jihadism as is the West."

Yet Bush's excessively militarized response to terrorism and his reductive, good-versus-evil rhetoric has played into the jihadists' strategy of framing their struggle as an irreconcilable conflict between Islam and the "crusader" West.

The United States needs a smarter strategy for undercutting the ideological appeal of the global jihad. For starters, we need to rally the world's democracies to a stouter defense of their liberal ideas. We should challenge the international community to strengthen norms against killing civilians and impose meaningful penalties on states that don't comply with tough new anti-terror conventions. We should join the International Criminal Court and seek indictments against Osama bin Laden and other terror chiefs for crimes against humanity. It's time for a real zero-tolerance policy toward terrorism, not one that makes exceptions for "resistance to occupation."

DLC: What Next in Lebanon?

The Democratic Leadership Council has some ideas on next steps for Lebanon:

If the international community wants Israel to stop short of removing the terrorist threat, then the international community needs to:

(1) Make it clear it repudiates the rejectionist claim that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish State and condemns terrorism against Israel just as it does terrorism against any other state. Europeans in particular have long advanced an implicit and unique exception for anti-Israeli terrorists on grounds that they have a "right to resistance" against Israeli occupation of territories obtained since 1967. But both Hamas and Hezbollah are operating from territories Israeli has unilaterally abandoned; and both explicitly reject Israel's existence within boundaries established in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. This is about Israeli sovereignty, not Israeli occupations, and terrorist acts against Israel should be opposed just as strongly as terrorist acts against, say, France.

(2) Find a way to enforce the long-standing UN mandate that Hezbollah be disarmed. The revival of Lebanon after its long civil war was based in part on the idea that Hezbollah would disband its militias and pursue its goals through peaceful political activity. It has indeed become part of the Lebanese political system, but also maintains the strongest military force in the country, thanks to massive infusions of Iranian money, training and weaponry. If UN Security Council members don't want Israel to destroy Hezbollah's military arm, they must commit themselves to do it themselves, by deploying a real international force in southern Lebanon that can prevent future attacks on Israel once the current fighting is over.

(3) Intensify pressure against Hamas to recognize Israel and reject terrorism if it wants to be regarded as a legitimate governing party. Like Hezbollah, Hamas faces a choice between terrorism or democratic politics; it cannot have it both ways. To their credit, Palestine's European paymasters supported U.S. efforts to cut off subsidies to the Palestinian Authority until such time as Hamas abandoned its rejectionist policies and terrorist tactics. But Hamas has abundantly confirmed its status as a Jihadist terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel, in both actions and rhetoric (such as The Washington Post op-ed last week by the Palestinian Authority prime minister pledging continued attacks on Israeli civilians until such time as Israel dealt with the "core 1948 issues," meaning the existence of a Jewish State). Hamas needs to be taken at its word and treated accordingly.

(4) Isolate and sanction Iran and Syria until such time as they stop serving as staging grounds and paymasters for rejectionist terrorism. The case for international action against Iran was overwhelming even before last week's events, given Tehran's serial defiance of global non-proliferation policies. Its deep complicity in the attacks on Israel -- Iran heavily finances and supplies Hezbollah, and also recently began channeling aid to Hamas, after a conference confirming Iran's determination to wipe Israel off the map -- makes such action urgent. Emboldened by international tolerance, and also by the preoccupation of the United States with Iraq, Iran is clearly pressing ahead with an agenda to destabilize the Middle East and establish itself as the dominant regional power. Iran's chief ally in the region, Syria, was nicely positioned to help in this flanking tactic, given its long support for Hamas and its residual interests in controlling Lebanon.

Both Tehran and Damascus have become clear threats to regional and world peace, and must be isolated and sanctioned, not appeased. Weapons transfers to terrorist groups must stop. Terrorist headquarters must be shut down. Those who fear Israeli military action against either regime need to supply an alternative way to rein in these rogue states. And Russia and China must finally understand that if they want to be great powers in a post-Cold War world, they must abandon their Cold War habit of aiding and abetting anti-western tyrants in Tehran, Damascus or Pyongyang.

And that's really the bottom line about how the United States should guide the international community in this crisis: deal with the problems if you don't want Israel to deal with them on their own terms, as it must. The administration should dispatch Secretary of State Condi Rice to the region to lead diplomatic efforts aimed at disarming Hezbollah, reining in Hamas, and imposing real sanctions on Iran and Syria for their complicity in terrorism.

The reality right now is that the fight against jihadism has entered a new and even more dangerous phase. If the United States aggressively pursues a multilateral, anti-jihadist strategy in this case or others, then we will be in a better position to not only serve as a peacemaker in the Middle East, but to reprise America's Cold War leadership in creating a collective security system that can thwart terrorists and tyrants alike.

Bernard Henri-Levy v. Hezbollah

This NY Times website Q&A with the French philosopher was sent to me by a friend in New York:

Q. 1. Why do you only paint your story from the point of view of Israelis? Why do you assume that Hezbollah is an organization that is not wanted by the people of Lebanon, if they provide services, have elected representatives, and are the only ones able to defend their country?
— Cornelius Diamond, La Jolla, Calif.

A. Three questions in one, dear Cornelius. First, why the Israeli viewpoint? Because only the other viewpoint is seen and I do not like conformism, much less injustice. In other words, it's okay to criticize Israel and debate the strategy adopted by the military command, which is not necessarily the right one. But-a little equity, please — let one begin by listening to what Israelis say and looking at what they are enduring: that's what I did in this reporting. Next: Isn't Hezbollah "wanted by the people of Lebanon"? Don't they "provide services" and "have elected representatives"? Yes, of course, there is no dispute about this, but since when would that be contradictory with the fact of being totalitarians and even perfect fascists? Wasn't Hitler — even though it's not comparable — democratically elected? Didn't Mussolini provide the Italian people every possible service? Indeed, isn't that in a general way the precise definition of fascist populism? Things get complicated with your third question and the idea that the people of Hezbollah are "the only ones able to defend their country." I hope you are joking! For in truth Hezbollah has been bleeding Lebanon and has literally taken it hostage and taken its own people hostage, turning them into human shields with mind-boggling cynicism — a bizarre way to "defend" a country.

Public Domain Images

Over the weekend, we visited with Professor David Dailey at Slippery Rock Universtiy in Pennsylvania. A professor of computer science, Dr. Dailey has a build one of the largest collection of public domain images, which he scanned into a database for public use. It's clip art on a massive scale, and you can browse the collection here. I liked this one of a Bactrian camel, a souvenir of our time in Central Asia...

Nora Boustany's Lebanese Jokebook

From today's Washington Post:

As one joke has it, residents fleeing the Shiite suburbs of Beirut were flashing the victory sign -- to indicate that only two buildings were still left standing.

It was followed by excited speculation that real estate values in the poor neighborhood of Ain al-Rummaneh, a crowded cluster of aging buildings overlooking the southern suburbs, had shot up by 50 percent. Why? It now has a sea view.

People are petrified of honoring their dental appointments out of fear they may have bridgework done, goes another favorite. So contagious have these stories been that in one refugee center, Marwa Saad, 15, whose family was driven out by fierce fighting near the southern market town of Nabatiyeh, did not dare utter a word without covering her mouthful of braces.

"Everyone keeps teasing me; they bully me to keep my mouth shut so we don't get hit by Israeli jets," she said about her friends, giggling with her hand to her mouth.

Another story has Haifa Wehbe, the curvaceous bombshell of Lebanese music videos, dispatched by the Hezbollah leadership to Israel to conduct negotiations. She returns pregnant. When confronted about her condition, the anecdote goes, Wehbe insisted she was only trying to help: "I thought I would get you another small hostage."

Some jokes target the Syrians for causing the crisis by allowing arms to flow to Hezbollah and pressuring the Lebanese government to let the group keep its arms. One joke says the Israelis cannot aim at the Syrian inhabitants of Homs. Why? Because the Israelis only have smart bombs.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is also the butt of some humor. The elderly women of the Christian neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh regard Nasrallah as their new idol and sex symbol, goes one line, because he has taken them back 40 years.

Another joke extols Nasrallah, saying he is now worthy of a statue since he managed to put the entire Shiite Muslim community, with its high rate of illiteracy, in schools.

Julie Burchill on BBC Anti-Semitism

From Haaretz:

Personally, I'd far prefer the Jews to be angry, aggressive and alive than meek, mild and dead - and that's what makes me and a minority like me feel so much like strangers in our own country, now more than ever. I've always loved being a hack, but now even that feels weird, as though I'm living among a bunch of snatched-body zombies who look like journalists but believe and say the most inhuman, evil things.

When Mel Gibson was picked up for drunk-driving recently, he was reported to have screamed at the police officer, whom he believed to be Jewish, "Fucking Jews! The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." His subsequent excuse was that he has "battled the disease of alcoholism for all my adult life." The British media are notorious for our love of the hard stuff; is that going to be our excuse too, I wonder, when large numbers of us are finally bang to rights for peddling the same loathsome lie?

British Reveal Al Qaeda Links to Airline Bombing Plot

According to The Guardian:

A brother of two of the 24 suspects seized by detectives investigating a plot to bomb up to 12 planes was seized in Pakistan shortly before police launched their raids, it emerged last night.
The arrest of Rashid Rauf in the border area with Afghanistan was a trigger that led investigators to start an immediate pre-emptive operation with officers fearing the alleged cells were ready to strike.

Pakistani officials claimed last night that Mr Rauf had links with al-Qaida. "We arrested him from the border area and on his disclosure we shared the information with British authorities, which led to further arrests in Britain," said the interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao.

The foreign minister, Khursheed Kasuri, said Mr Rauf had been monitored for some time before his arrest.

Mr Rauf's uncle was murdered in Birmingham in April 2002 and as part of the murder hunt it is understood that Mr Rauf's home in St Margaret's Road in the city was searched.

Mr Rauf's arrest was one of seven made by Pakistani authorities in recent days, and is understood to have included one other Briton. Mr Rauf's two brothers were arrested in Birmingham on Thursday. There were reports last night that Mr Rauf provided the link between the plot's planners and the British Muslims alleged to have been preparing to carry out the attacks.

It also emerged yesterday that at least one suspect arrested in Walthamstow, east London, regularly attended camps run by Tablighi Jamaat, an organisation which the Americans believe has been used as a recruiting ground for al-Qaida. Martyrdom tapes and other items were found in the search of the 29 properties where arrests were made on Thursday.

Roger L. Simon: Rudy Giuliani, Now!

Andrew Sullivan on Israel & Lebanon

Andrew Sullivan quotes a letter from a Lebanese Christian praising Israelis and then adds this:

Our strongest weapons in this war are our values. Yes, military force is important and necessary. But our values are what will win in the long run — because they reflect a deeper truth about human dignity than the poisonous doctrines of distorted religious certitude and bigotry. That's why we must never — never — tolerate torture of prisoners; that's why we should never sacrifice the rule of law; that's why we should never give civilian politicians a "get-out-of-jail-free" card for war crimes. And that's why we should support Israel now, more than ever. She is not perfect. But her enemies are in a different category of morality. The difference between collateral civilian casualties and civilian casualties as the entire purpose of war is the difference between an embattled civilization and barbarism. Yes, there are grays in the Middle East. But this isn't one of them.

Have American Networks Shown This Footage?

I think it says it all about the horrible anti-Israel atrocity propaganda campaign. BTW, has the Red Cross done anything to discipline "Green Helmet" or its Lebanese affiliates for this? I just can't believe that official Red Cross guidelines allow manhandling corpses for PR like this video shows. WARNING: If you are squeamish, skip this video clip.(ht Michelle Malkin)

My Cousin Blogs From Israel...

At Savtadotty.

Andrew McCarthy: Bush's Democratization Project Abets Terrorism

Wonder how long he'll be able to keep his position with the Bush administration-friendly Foundation for the Defense of Democracies after publishing this in National Review Online?:

The administration, which initially refused even to acknowledge that what’s occurring is a war, now appears to have widened the lens a smidge. There is indeed a war. But, mind you, it only, only involves Israel and Hezbollah.

It certainly does not involve us — the enemy whom Hezbollah has sworn for a quarter century to defeat — because then we’d have to forfeit that Honest Broker title and all the gushing love from the fabled Arab Street that comes with it (between choruses of “Death to America”).

It certainly does not involve Iran and Syria, because then we’d have to do something about governments that facilitate terror organizations — and, by the way, since we lawyers are so fond of precedent, the marvelous track-record of this ostrich approach can be found by reviewing Clinton v. Taliban (1996-2001) and Clinton v. Palestinian Authority (1993-2001).

And, most of all, it certainly does not involve our dear friend, Lebanon, because then we’d have to admit that the Democracy Project — the utopian copestone of counterterrorism policy in the second Bush term — does not, in fact, counter terrorism. Over the long haul, its prospects are dubious. In the short term, it abets terrorism.

Michelle Malkin Says to Read This Book

Michelle Malkin says Annie Jacobsen predicted today's airport bomb scare. You can buy TERROR IN THE SKIES by clicking here:

Christopher Hitchens on the Failure of the Left

From The Atlantic:

It is perfectly true that most Americans were somewhat indifferent to the outside world as it was before September 11, and also highly ignorant of it—a point on which the self-blaming faction insists. While attention was elsewhere, a deadly and irreconcilable enemy was laying plans and training recruits. This enemy—unless we are to flatter him by crediting his own propaganda—cares no more for the wretched of the West Bank than did Saddam Hussein when he announced that the road to Palestine and Jerusalem led through Kuwait and Kurdistan. But a lethal and remorseless foe is a troubling thing in more than one way. Not only may he wish you harm; he may force you to think and to act. And these responsibilities—because thinking and acting are responsibilities—may be disconcerting. The ancient Greeks were so impressed and terrified by the Furies that they re-baptized them the Eumenides—"the Kindly Ones"—the better to adjust to them. Members of the left, along with the far larger number of squishy "progressives," have grossly failed to live up to their responsibility to think; rather, they are merely reacting, substituting tired slogans for thought. The majority of those "progressives" who take comfort from Stone and Chomsky are not committed, militant anti-imperialists or anti-capitalists. Nothing so muscular. They are of the sort who, discovering a viper in the bed of their child, would place the first call to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

I believe I can prove this by means of a brief rhetorical experiment. It runs as follows. Very well, I will stipulate that September 11 was revenge for past American crimes. Specifically, and with supporting detail, I will agree that it was revenge for the crime of past indifference to, and collusion with, the Taliban. May we now agree to cancel this crime by removing from the Taliban the power of enslavement that it exerts over Afghans, and which it hopes to extend? Dead silence from progressives. Couldn't we talk about the ozone layer instead? In other words, all the learned and conscientious objections, as well as all the silly or sinister ones, boil down to this: Nothing will make us fight against an evil if that fight forces us to go to the same corner as our own government. (The words "our own" should of course be appropriately ironized, with the necessary quotation marks.) To do so would be a betrayal of the Cherokees.

Some part of this is at least intelligible. My daughter goes to school just across the river from the Pentagon; her good-hearted teachers proposed an "Amity Walk" for children of all nations, to culminate at the statue of Mahatma Gandhi on Massachusetts Avenue. The event would demonstrate that children had no quarrel with anybody. It would not stress the fact that a death squad had just hit a target a few hundred yards away, and would have liked to crash another planeload of hostages anywhere in downtown Washington, and was thwarted in this only by civilians willing to use desperate force. But I had my own reasons, which were no less internationalist, for opposing anything so dismal, and for keeping my child away from anything so inane. I didn't like General Westmoreland or Colonel North or General Pinochet, and I have said more about this than some people. (I did not, like Oliver Stone, become rich or famous by romancing Camelot or by making an unwatchable three-hour movie showing Nixon's and Kissinger's human and vulnerable sides.) I detest General Sharon, and have done so for many years. My face is set against religious and racial demagogues. I believe I know an enemy when I see one. My chief concern when faced with such an antagonist is not that there will be "over-reaction" on the part of those who will fight the adversary—which seems to be the only thing about the recent attacks and the civilized world's response to them that makes the left anxious.

At his best, Noam Chomsky used to insist that there was a distinction to be drawn between state crimes and insurgent crimes, or between the violence of the emperor and the violence of the pirate. The Taliban-bin Laden alliance is a horrific and novel blend of the two. It employs the methods of the anarchist and the rebel in one declension, being surreptitious and covert and relying on the drama of the individual "martyr." But it also draws on the support of police and military and financial systems, and on the base indulgence of certain established and well-funded religious and theocratic leaderships. It throws acid in the faces of unveiled women. It destroys and burns museums and libraries. (Do we need to submit to our own guilt to "understand" this?) It is an elemental challenge, still terrifying even when one appreciates the appalling fact that its program of medieval stultification cannot actually be realized but will nevertheless be fought for. How contemptible it is, and how lowering to the spirit, that America's liberals should have cried so loudly before they had even been hurt, and that they should have been able to be so stoic only when ignoring the cries of others.

Incident at Dulles

This morning, at around 7am, we received a call from a friend at Dulles Airport checking-in for his BA flight to London. What is going on? he wanted to know. There was pandemonium, rumors, and he had to turn in all his shaving cream, toothpaste, gels, lotions, and so forth. It cost me $80! he complained. (He's so well-groomed that he sometimes gets upgraded to Business Class for free). No one had told him what it was about, other than a terrorist threat. So we turned on the TV. And we called him back to explain. Meanwhile, he'd been videotaped by the local TV news dumping his personal care products.

Have the British caught all the plotters? or are some still at large, possibly in the USA?

Despite reassurances from Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and Company this morning, we are not completely reassured...

(More background on this story at MichelleMalkin.com and DebbieSchlussel.com.)

America Must Fight Harder

Says Steven M. Warshawsky in The American Thinker, responding to the National Review's Stanley Kurtz:

The truth is, to date, we have not made any effort to destroy the forces of militant Islam. We have only engaged in limited conventional actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and (supposedly) covert ops worldwide. That’s it. We haven’t mobilized the American people for war. We haven’t destroyed Iran and Syria. We haven’t closed radical mosques or shut down the jihadist propaganda networks. We haven’t conducted targeted assassinations of jihadi leaders across the globe. We haven’t made it clear to the terrorists and their supporters that they cannot win and that they will die.

How can Kurtz be so sure the enemy cannot be defeated? We haven’t even tried.

Yes, Kurtz is right in that a much broader war will be required to defeat militant Islam. And, yes, Kurtz would have been right to question whether the United States and Europe have the political will to engage in this fight. I have my own doubts on this score. But to believe that militant Islam “cannot be defeated” is ridiculous—and only weakens whatever resolve we still have to kill them before they kill us.

The ugly truth about existential warfare—and that is what we are engaged in with militant Islam—is that the only way to win an existential conflict is to kill as many of the enemy population as possible and to destroy as much of its society as possible.

This is precisely what we (and our allies) did to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during World War Two. The reason these two enemies were defeated and pacified is because literally millions of their young men were killed, and their societies were brutally battered into physical and psychological submission. Just because we no longer have the stomach for this type of warfare, for bloodletting on this massive scale, doesn’t mean it is not an effective strategy for winning wars. Indeed, it is the only strategy. It certainly is the jihadists’ strategy, only limited by their lack of military capability.

How quickly we have forgotten 9/11. How blithely we assume that an even more devastating attack could never happen. A nuclear bomb in New York City or one of our other great metropolitan areas could inflict more casualties than we suffered in World War Two. This is what we should be fighting to prevent. We should not be fighting for elections in Iraq.

Today, our excessive compunction about killing the enemy, and about having our own soldiers die in combat, is the real reason the gloomy scenario described by Kurtz may come to pass. For “peace” is not an option. Even if we do not fight the jihadists, they will keep attacking us, and keep trying to kill as many Americans, Jews, and westerners as possible. Kurtz surely is right on that point. But the answer is to fight harder, not resign ourselves to an even deadlier future.

Night Watch

In order not to be subjected to the anti-Israel atrocity propaganda that fills the nightly airwaves here, I've been watching a lot of movies lately. Finally got around to seeing Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor), Timur Bekmambetov's strikingly energetic adaptation of Sergey Lukyanenko's science-fiction thriller about the struggle to keep one's humanity during battle.

The battle in this case is an eternal struggle between the forces of Light and Darkness, represented respectively by a Soviet-style city electric company bureaucrat and his team on one side, and some "cool" private-sector types--videogame, pop-music, butchers in a marketplace--on the other. They fight for the souls of the "Others"--people with special gifts. Oh yes, the Dark ones are vampires. And there is a Truce which gets violated all the time, too. Day Watch and Night Watch patrol the truce. Think Checkpoint Charlie with vampires.

At first, I thought the picture seemed too crude and noisy, just a videogame imitation Hollywood blockbuster. But it stuck with me, I thought about it a lot--with all the talk of the truce in Lebanon making it seem relevant. In the end, it seemed to me there was a symbolic level that the picture was operating on that made it the super-blockbuster of the year in Moscow. It has something to do with the collapse of Communism--because the revolution, in Leninist terminology, devoured its children.

The Vampirism is a trope, symbol, that goes deeper than Buffy the Vampire Slayer (seen on a TV clip). It has something to do with the famous Russian Character and Russian Soul--maybe even Gogol's dead souls. The Day Watch and Night Watch are symbolic too.

But of what? The Cold War? The Clash of Civilizations? Stay tuned, since part two of the trilogy has been completed in Russia, and will soon be coming to a theatre or DVD store near you...

Portrait of Jennie

This is a wonderful film about the relationship between art and life. Joseph Cotten plays an unsuccessful painter, whose commercial landscapes just don't sell. While visiting galleries, one of the owners encourages him to paint portraits. On the way home, he runs into "Jennie" in Central Park. She's his muse, his inspiration, and his love. His imaginary friend encourages him to take greater and greater chances, eventually resulting in a masterpiece that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Cotten character passes through three stages of artistic development--commercial, political, and personal. Each phase is more difficult, but as he progresses he confronts and overcomes his fears. His talent makes the imaginary real.

Ethel Barrymore is the elderly art dealer who shares the secret of artistry with him. Holden's performance is terrific. Jennifer Jones plays the muse.

The 1948 film was directed by William Dieterle, and it is extremely arty, as well as psychological. Almost an artistic film noir.

I give it five stars--for art lovers. If you are not interested in art, or the interior struggles of artistic souls, you may not like it at all...

The Foreigner's Gift by Fouad Ajami

Just read a good review in the Washington Post Book World of Fouad Ajami's latest book, about the American war in Iraq.

It reminded me that I read the book as soon as a friend in New York mentioned that it had been published. Thanks to Amazon's free shipping promotion, it came in 2 days and I read it in another couple of days. It's pretty sobering. And he knows what he's talking about.

I sat in on a few seminars from Professor Ajami at SAIS, and found him to be fascinating as well as very outspoken. A real intellectual, of the old school. Very cultured. Also, not doctrinaire in the least. He's brilliant and open-minded. He's consulted with Joe Biden, Bill Clinton and President Chirac of France. So the charges of neo-conservatism ought to be taken in context. I think of him as a brilliant and independent thinker, representing the best of Levantine civilization.

Unfortunately, he asked me not to quote what he said in class, saying that he works very hard to write very carefully. So, I respected that request...Too bad. He actually has some very strong opinions, and states them bluntly. But not on paper, it appears.

This new book is as allusive and elliptical as one might have expected from a writer who chooses his words with exceptional care. Call it a Shi'ite caution, I think I learned that cultural characteristic in his seminar.

Still, if you are willing to read carefully between the lines, Ajami has a clear message: America gave Iraq a gift with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But how Iraq takes that gift, especially given a history of sectarian tensions, in a state previously ruled by a strongman with a whip and a bag of money (from oil revenues), is up for grabs.

The best part of this book are protraits of various Iraqi personalities. They really come alive as fully rounded human beings, not the cardboard cutouts of so many reports. These colorful and enigmatic characters--including Ahmad Chalabi, among others--reminded me a little of Gogol's Dead Souls.

In sum, Ajami has performed a great service by humanizing a conflict that is often portrayed in terms of dry political rhetoric.

Read it carefully--at least twice...

Anti-Semites for Ned Lamont

That's the bottom-line of this Lanny Davis op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

Now, in the closing days of the Lieberman primary campaign, I have reluctantly concluded that I was wrong. The far right does not have a monopoly on bigotry and hatred and sanctimony. Here are just a few examples (there are many, many more anyone with a search engine can find) of the type of thing the liberal blog sites have been posting about Joe Lieberman:

• "Ned Lamont and his supporters need to [g]et real busy. Ned needs to beat Lieberman to a pulp in the debate and define what it means to be an AMerican who is NOT beholden to the Israeli Lobby" (by "rim," posted on Huffington Post, July 6, 2006).

• "Joe's on the Senate floor now and he's growing a beard. He has about a weeks growth on his face. . . . I hope he dyes his beard Blood red. It would be so appropriate" (by "ctkeith," posted on Daily Kos, July 11 and 12, 2005).

• On "Lieberman vs. Murtha": "as everybody knows, jews ONLY care about the welfare of other jews; thanks ever so much for reminding everyone of this most salient fact, so that we might better ignore all that jewish propaganda [by Lieberman] about participating in the civil rights movement of the 60s and so on" (by "tomjones," posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).

• "Good men, Daniel Webster and Faust would attest, sell their souls to the Devil. Is selling your soul to a god any worse? Leiberman cannot escape the religious bond he represents. Hell, his wife's name is Haggadah or Muffeletta or Diaspora or something you eat at Passover" (by "gerrylong," posted on the Huffington Post, July 8, 2006).

• "Joe Lieberman is a racist and a religious bigot" (by "greenskeeper," posted on Daily Kos, Dec. 7, 2005).

And these are some of the nicer examples.

Given Ned Lamont's former membership in an apparently restricted Greenwich country club, his endorsement by Al Sharpton, and the "blackface" mockery of Lieberman, it's not surprising that Lanny Davis has finally noticed something very disturbing about some Ned Lamont supporters...