The State of the Chavez Capriles race: Hope Springs Eternal in Venezuela?

Unnoticed by many, there is another crucial election taking place in our hemisphere this fall--this Sunday in fact. Fourteen-year incumbent president Hugo Chávez (who re-wrote the Venezuelan constitution to allow him to run for unlimited terms of office--in effect to become President for Life) is facing off against former Mariana province governor Enrique Capriles Rodanski. Given Chávez' legendarily tight grip on his country's failing democracy, many have considered the race a farce--a foregone conclusion that might satisfy the Carter Center but would fool no one else. It would in effect be the death knell for freedom in Venezuela.

Yet it turns out that democracy might not be as tender of a flower as we have thought.

Mr. Capriles, despite facing dauntingly unequal access to airtime and the relentless persecution of both himself and his campaign operatives (three were shot by Chavista thugs last week), has captured the public imagination. Young and energetic, he makes a stark contrast with the ailing Mr. Chávez , whose weakened state makes his standard campaign shtick--cavorting onstage, singing to the moon--a sort of danse macabre. More importantly, Mr. Capriles offers a new sort of political platform, one that combines Chávez more popular social programs (reformed and vetted for corruption) with a return to the free market principles that were the original basis of Venezuela's prosperity. His message is resonating, and while polls in Venezuela are not exactly reliable, the gap with Chávez is narrowing and some even show the challenger ahead (see the numbers at the end of this article). Clearly the two headed to a close race on Sunday, and there is a real chance of an upset.

Why, you may ask, should this be of consuming interest to the United States? The Middle East is on fire and we are facing bleak times at home. While it would be nice to have Chavez gone and basic freedoms restored to Venezuelans, should this really be a high priority?

Yes it should, for several reasons Mr. Capriles articulated this week. He has started to talk about his foreign policy, and has pledged to mend the tattered relationship with our close ally Colombia, which would be a great help in finally eradicating the troublesome terrorist groups Mr. Chavez has funded on the Venezuela-Colombia border for so long. In addition, Mr. Capriles has indicated he would distance himself from the close relationship Mr. Chávez has forged with Iran over the last decade. This would be a massive gain for the United States as Venezuela has served as a financial clearing house for Iran, helping it evade the economic sanctions we hope will deter its nuclear ambitions. In addition, there are unsavory reports that Chávez has been allowing Iranian Hezbollah proxies to train on Margarita Island--an activity that could have grave security consequences for the United States.

In addition, Mr. Capriles' election stands to have a very positive effect on all of us: it could make a meaningful reduction in gas prices. As the Financial Times reports today, Mr. Capriles proposes to double Venezuela's oil output as part of his 100 day manifesto, an increase that would have a substantial impact on crude prices. And he would do it in a business-friendly way that would bring more prosperity and industry reinvestment to Venezuela.

It should be born in mind that Mr. Capriles may not be a perfect ally--he is certainly center-left, not a right-wing candidate, but his positives hugely outweigh his negatives, and a number of them have highly-desirable ramifications for the United States. And his election should give us all hope that amid the missteps and disappointments we have witnessed in the progress of democracy around the globe over the past few years, this story can still have a happy ending. Even after a fourteen-year starvation diet, democracy is alive in Venezuela, and may only require the spark of this election to flourish again.

A Risk of Contagion: The Growing Threat from Syria's WMD

Recent reports of al Qaida infiltration of the Syrian resistance have strengthened our national reluctance to intervene in the slow-motion train wreck that is the Syrian civil war. After all, we hardly want to be in the position of arming our enemies (that didn't go so well with the Mexican drug cartels), and should they be successful an al Qaida backed regime is one of the few things that would be worse than the Assad thugocracy that has oppressed Syria for so long.

Furthermore, our options are limited at best. All the high hopes pinned to Kofi Annan's diplomatic effort to broker a cease-fire have been dashed. Despite international outcry over ongoing atrocities such as the Houla massacre, there now seems to be little we can do beside plead with Vladimir Putin to get his buddy Bashir al-Assad to stop slaughtering his civilian population.

We might be forgiven for wanting to forget this whole sad, sorry mess and turn our eyes away from the carnage on the grounds that it simply is not our problem, and that even if it were we simply cannot fix it. Unfortunately it is not so simple. It is our problem and we have to try to fix it.  As this Jerusalem Post editorial details, a grave danger lurks beneath the surface of this conflict that directly threatens our national security: Syria's WMD. The presence of al Qaida in a country with these weapons further complicates an already enormously complex challenge, and puts the lie once and for all to the contention that Syria has nothing to do with us.

The issue is not so much whether Assad will use the weapons on his own people (although he may well, his father was not squeamish about it).  For us it is that Syria's WMD could fall into the sort of eager hands that snatched Libyan stockpiles in the chaotic days after Qaddafi's fall, and spirited them to Lebanon. Those shoulder-fired missiles present a worrisome threat to Israel to which the IDF is responding, no doubt thankful for their prudent recent investment in missile defense programs.

Assad has a far more deadly bag of tricks; while the 2007 Israeli strike may have retarded his efforts to develop nuclear capabilities, his successful chemical and biological weapons programs are well-known. What we do not know, however, is where he is storing these weapons. In an increasingly chaotic Syria where we have no presence, we have no way to ensure these stockpiles are safeguarded from whatever bad actor may choose to help himself and spread the grim contagion of these weapons where he will.

A number of alarming scenarios then present themselves. Our immediate concern would have to be Israel should the Iranians, who certainly know where the weapons are, tip off their Hamas or Hezbollah proxies regarding their location. It is even more unpleasant, however, to imagine what might happen if one of the jihadi groups that have joined the Syrian opposition, notably al Qaida, happens upon them.

President Obama and his administration have justified their lethargy towards Syria on the grounds that it is not Libya. In the case of Syria's WMD we should devoutly hope so. If the international community decides that despite all the very real dangers and challenges of intervention, leaving these weapons to the whims of fate is an intolerable risk, the administration should reverse the lackadaisical "lead from behind" approach that failed to secure Libya's stockpiles, and take an active and aggressive role in securing Syria's.

As the Jerusalem Post points out, however, no one should be under the illusion that there are good options here. We have to stop hoping one will magically emerge. This is not a situation that can be resolved with drones or a special operations strike--we face far uglier choices. We might conclude that WMD in the hands of terrorists is worse than Assad and communicate to him that there could be some wriggle room if he reveals their location. We might, despite the inevitable "Bush-lied-about-Iraq" comparisons, make with our allies the public case for the containment of these weapons in an effort to explain what is at stake here. But doing nothing is becoming an increasingly dangerous policy. The presence of al Qaida in an unstable country with WMD has changed the nature of the threat, and as the last fifteen months have demonstrated, ignoring Syria will not make it go away.

Victoria Coates is an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Why Ozzie Matters

Ozzie Guillén, manager of the newly re-minted Miami Marlins, has earned himself a five-game suspension by declaring his affection for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in Time magazine:

"I love Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that son of a bitch is still there."

Many entities survive through unsavory methods—cockroaches and kudzu vines spring to mind.  But Guillén wasn’t praising some neutral long-lived thing, he was admiring the machismo of the man who has spent more than six decades trampling on the freedoms of his fellow ballplayers.  

Baseball is a passion in Cuba, which has produced some of the game’s greatest players.  Before Castro’s revolution, the Havana Sugar Kings were minor league competitors.  Castro himself was a fan, and formed his own pick-up tem called Los Barbudos after the unkempt facial hair fashionable with the revolutionaries.  But shortly after he seized political power he grabbed control of the Sugar Kings as well.  The American-owned franchise was moved to the states, leaving Cubans to play for government-run teams.

Castro’s Cuba is no place for great ballplayers, however, who relish healthy competition and the opportunity to gain from their talent and hard work.  Unlike Venezuelan players like Guillén who still have the nominal freedom to play outside their home country (even if they get kidnapped for their wealth when they return to visit their families), Cubans cannot leave their island paradise at will.  Many athletes have taken the dangerous path of defection to play in United States, and a healthy number have made it into the big leagues.  Guillen’s comments did a great disservice to those who had to leave home and family, not to mention risk life and limb, for the freedom to play.

Sure, Ozzie Guillén is a character, a notorious hot head and loose with his words, but these comments are more than just shooting from the hip as some have suggested.  His apology and confused explanation are at best weak sauce.  As a Venezuelan, Guillén should know better, and it seems sometimes he does, at least when it comes to his own country.  Guillén has been fortunate enough to make a successful career for himself in America, hired as he has been to manage a MLB team in the city with our largest community of Cuban ex-patriots and playing (and winning) baseball this very week in the birthplace our liberty.  He should perhaps think of the less fortunate trapped in Cuba before he exercises his freedom to speak.

It's a Wonderful Country: Robert Kagan's "The World America Made"

Robert Kagan's The World America Made (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) is an extended essay on the role of the United States in the current global order. Kagan identifies political and economic freedom combined with military strength as the foundation of the enduring American power that has encouraged the current historical "wave" towards democracy, and argues the unique nature of this power has played a pivotal role in recent history.

While this analysis may not seem earth-shattering, what makes The World America Made compelling is Kagan's engagement with the current hypothesis that U.S. power is in decline, perhaps inevitably and perhaps desirably. Rather than delivering a rah-rah, red-meat defense of America the Good, Kagan discusses the many inconsistencies, hesitancies and set-backs that have beset the "American century," and recognizes the imperfections inherent in any human endeavor. But in the end, Kagan concludes that the international move towards a more liberal order is ultimately dependent on America's actions.

The World America Made is roughly divided into an introduction, three main sections, and a conclusion. The introduction suggests that America has played a role rather like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life--a reluctant hero who does not understand his own strength, and can only comprehend it through an exercise in counter-factual history. The first section deals with the historical tension between American interventionism and isolationism, the middle of the book turns to the importance of a "liberal economic order," which, Kagan argues, is like political freedom hardly a pre-ordained inevitability, and the last third addresses "next steps." Within this framework, the book deals with the salutary increase in political freedom around the globe; as Kagan points out, there has been a ten-fold rise in free governments from 12 to 100+ over the last 70 years. While his praise for Jimmy Carter's human rights agenda might be debated, Kagan's insistence on the spread of democracy as a necessity for improving the greater good, even when it is difficult, is welcome. Conventional wisdom holds that "progress" towards a more liberal political and economic order is an inevitable evolution, but one of Kagan's contributions in this book is to point out the fallacy of the evolutionary model, and the importance of human initiative and action to bring this end to pass.

Throughout The World America Made, Kagan grapples with the exercise of U.S. military power, which is a thorny issue to say the least. We generally understand the United States to be something of a military bully, but as Kagan argues, no nation in history has been so unconstrained in its exercise of power; indeed, the U.S. has been broadly supported in its military activities around the globe. Kagan argues this power has been a force for peace, noting that the "unusual combination of vast power and remarkable global acceptance of that power is the main factor that has deterred great-power war" since WWII. (pg. 65) It seems a reasonable conclusion that this deterrence has been worth the investment.

In the end, Kagan returns to his movie analogy, noting that while our world, like George Bailey's town, would have been far worse off without the United States, a happy ending is not pre-ordained. Americans can still choose, or be persuaded into, decline--and the results as Kagan discusses throughout the book may not be pretty. Assertions that international organizations are better equipped to deal with global problems, and that other nations will automatically preserve and expand the political, economic and security priorities established by the United States, are hardly borne out by history. "In short," as Kagan concludes, "it may be more than good fortune that has allowed the United States in the past to come through crises and emerge stronger and healthier than other nations while its various competitors have faltered. And it may be more than just wishful thinking to believe it may do so again." (pg. 133)

While Kagan's arguments can on occasion become a little too insistent on even-handedness (for example, the suggestion that other democracies such as Germany and Japan might have fueled a similar golden age in the 1970s and 80s, as Kagan does on page 29, are somewhat specious given that those democracies would not have existed with out the U.S. and it seems a stretch to celebrate communist China for fueling global prosperity given that country's abhorrence for the free market, as Kagan does on page 43), he deserves praise for the broad historical and international scope of this book. There are echoes throughout of the introduction to Donald Kagan's (the author's father) 1991 Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy, which was written in the context of the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Robert Kagan can now view these events with the benefit of historical perspective, which he brings effectively to his discussion of our collective "historical fallacy" in assuming American power was much greater in the past and therefore lessened today. He points out the many setbacks and indeed disasters that have beset us since WWII, notably Watergate and Vietnam in conjunction with the economic downturn of the 1970s, which in many ways dwarf our current troubles. It may be for another generation to bring a clear eye to the challenges we face, from the rise of China to the Arab Spring to our fiscal crisis, but as Kagan points out, accepting pre-emptive defeat would be a great disservice to ourselves, and to the global community.

The World America Made is an engaging and provocative book that makes an important contribution to our currently anemic intellectual public square. Particularly in this election year when we will make important decisions about the future economic and military policies that will shape coming decades, it deserves a careful read.

Is Hong Kong Becoming A "Real Headache" for Beijing?

Like Beijing, Hong Kong faces a "leadership transition" this year. In the 15 years since control of the island passed from Great Britain to China, successive rulers have been chosen by a committee of officials--and while large for a committee (1,200 people), this body is only a fraction of Hong Kong's 7.1 million inhabitants, who have no voice in their government.

But that may be changing. The anointed candidate, Donald Tang, is embroiled in a political scandal that can only be called epic, a sort of caricature of the party boss involving blatant infidelities and a secret, luxury underground bunker with wine cellar and health spa--as well as high-end junkets courtesy of Hong Kong's business community, eager to curry favor with the ostensible heir-apparent. But Mr. Tang's corruption and flagrant disregard for the rules that control the lives of the vast majority has finally proven too much even for this authoritarian political structure, and the people of Hong Kong are demanding he step down and an alternate candidate be put forward.

All this might be a tempest in a tea pot, if the People's Republic of China were not also facing a "transition" of its own. America got its first look at Xi Jinping, the Chinese Vice President and heir apparent to Hu Jintao, last week. The unassuming Xi does not appear to have the endemic vices of Tang, but the fact is that he is slated to be the leader of 1.3 billion people--and they, too, have had no say in the matter. Most Americans, including the Obama administration, seem to accept this state of affairs as inevitable, even though it contributes to the strained economic and diplomatic relationship between the US and the PRC.

Suddenly, Hong Kong is turning into a "real headache" for Beijing: instead of the orderly passing of power in Hong Kong in March that would neatly presage the larger events scheduled for later this year, there is the threat of instability.

Nothing could be more dangerous to the PRC than a successful demand for a free system of government where leaders are elected, not transitioned, into office. And unlike the provincial protests in China that rarely make it into the western media, Hong Kong is a much more high-profile case. The inclination of the PRC will be to impose Tang on Hong Kong and respond swiftly and harshly to dissent, but the publicity this might attract would hardly be in keeping with Xi’s carefully groomed image as a western-friendly leader with ties to Iowa and a weakness for the NBA. On the other hand, giving into the demands for increased accountability from the government to the people could result in considerable unpleasantness in the north, if the Chinese people decide to take notice. The situation in Hong Kong could turn out to be something far more serious than a headache for the Communist party bosses--which might in turn present an opportunity to an American president eager to promote democratic change in China.

Beware Greeks Demanding Benefits

In the most recent round of violent protests that have rocked Greece, a group of aggrieved Communist party members went up onto the Acropolis and hung banners from the massive rock. "Down with Dictatorship" they proclaimed (in English as well as in Greek for the benefit of the western media and/or relevant parties in London and Washington, D.C.).

The message was not particularly subtle: Here, in the birthplace of democracy, Greeks would once again stand up to their oppressors and claim their ancient freedoms. At the very feet of the Parthenon they made their stand, with the ruins of the classical past providing witness.

The juxtaposition between the "birthplace of democracy" and Greece's current budget woes has been echoed in the media, illustrated with video of Athenians torching Starbucks and Cinnabon. What this analysis fails to recognize is that the contemporary Greeks are rejecting their own heritage as they riot not for freedom, but against it.

The Parthenon has been caught up in this irony, as it has been in so many previous conflicts. Originally constructed as a monument to the successful--and near miraculous--defeat of the Persian empire by the Delian League in the early 5th century BC, the monument became the symbol of the small by doughty Athenian democracy that has been the touchstone for subsequent attempts at free governance. Rome, Venice, Florence, Holland, Great Britain and the United States have in turn claimed classical Athens as an ideological ancestor. Rose-colored glasses notwithstanding, the Parthenon represents the best of the western tradition, the urge towards political freedom that enables prosperity and culture.

Alas, the Parthenon today is but a shadow of its former self. While it survived for centuries in the post-classical world as a church and then a mosque, it was blown up in 1687 in an accident rather similar to the one that destroyed the Attikon theater in Athens over the weekend. The precarious ruin that is the contemporary Parthenon is undergoing a restoration in which each block of marble is removed, studied, and replaced in the archaeological equivalent of Humpty Dumpty.

The philosophical legacy of the culture that produced the Parthenon appears to be in similar tatters. According to Pericles, the building's patron, the strength of Athens was its self-sufficiency:

Again, we are contrary to most men in matter of bounty. For we purchase our friends not by receiving but by bestowing benefits. And he that bestoweth a good turn is ever the most constant friend because he will not lose the thanks due unto him from him whom he bestowed it on. Whereas the friendship of him that oweth a benefit is dull and flat, as knowing his benefit not to be taken for a favour but for a debt.

In other words, free men should never aspire to handouts, or embrace the dull and flat dead end that is debt. It is ironic indeed that the Parthenon now stands over the banners demanding benefits be bestowed on the Greeks. The enemy is no longer the invading Persians or rival Spartans, but rather "the monopolies" and the European Union who threaten to deny the favours decried by Pericles.

The Parthenon is fragile--not just the beleagured, damaged structure itself, but also the aspirational ideal it has come to represent. Those who believe independence is still worth pursuing should take note of its inglorious appropriation by the forces of dependence in Athens. New Parthenons in Philadelphia and Nashville attest to the influence this structure has had over our democracy. The original may well be beyond saving at this point, but we can preserve its legacy by heeding the words of Pericles.

Why is Syria different?

While the recent increase of attention to the ongoing carnage in Syria is a welcome change from the Obama administration's collective state of denial over the past ten months, signals remain mixed, and our policy is unclear if not non-existent. This week alone, for example, we got the welcome news that the Pentagon is preparing military options on Syria for the President, but at the same time White House press secretary announced those options will not be exercised.

The waters have been further muddied by the President's insistence that there is no parity between the situation in Libya last year and what we face now in Syria. In Libya, the threat to civilians and opportunity to topple a vicious dictator were sufficient cause for Mr. Obama to engage the U.S. military, even without a pressing national security interest at stake. While it can be argued that once the U.S. engaged in Libya it would have been preferable to actually lead from the front to secure weapons stockpiles and guard against al Qaida encroachment, the fact remains that the world is a better place with Colonel Qaddafi gone, as Mr. Obama routinely reminds us.

Meanwhile, as many as ten times the civilians killed in Libya before NATO's intervention have died in Syria over the last year. Bashir Assad is no less cruel and repressive a dictator than Muammar Qaddafi. The threat of Syria's unknown stockpiles of WMD falling into bad hands demands our urgent attention. And, above all, the United States has a clear strategic interest in toppling this vital ally of Iran.

But Syria is somehow different, and not worthy of the same sort of military assistance we offered to the Libyan rebels. Rather than taking decisive action in the form of military aid through our purported ally Turkey (perhaps in August when the President issued a statement calling for Assad's ouster on his way out of town for vacation), the U.S. has remained on the diplomatic equivalent of a hamster wheel. From the ill-advised resumption of "normal" relations with Syria last January through the pathetic failure of the Security Council resolution this weekend, our efforts to resolve the situation have been futile wastes of time and energy as the slaughter in Syria goes on to the tune of 100 people a day.

In dealing with Libya and Syria, consistency need not be the hobgoblin of little minds but can rather be the hallmark of a consistent and coordinated foreign policy. There are equivalencies to be drawn between the two crises, and once these are recognized we should take equivalent action. It is not a decision to be taken lightly, but we would not be alone and the cause is just. We have the unified support of our European and Arab allies. We have moral and strategic interests at stake. Rather than whining about the shocking moral turpitude of the United Nations, the President of the United States needs to remember his responsibilities as the leader of the free world--and lead.

Embracing the Message, Not Just the Messanger

Prevailing wisdom appears to be that Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary because he stuck it to the main-stream media in the debates last week. Certainly the media is not popular in conservative circles, and there is a well-deserved reservoir of resentment against the relentless debate cycle of the past few months, but this is not the full story behind Mr. Gingrich's most recent phoenix routine.

Thousands of people do not turn out in cold January rain just because a candidate makes a smart remark to a reporter--or even two reporters. But they will defy the "inevitable" because they perceive a candidate who connects viscerally with their concerns. Mr. Gingrich's answer to Juan Williams in Myrtle Beach tapped into decades of Republican frustration with being identified as racist for not believing democrat policies implemented through the federal government are the only morally-acceptable means to deal with issues related to minorities. Mr. Gingrich's answer to John King in Charleston mirrored broad distaste for the politics of personal destruction that have colored our national discourse and driven many able candidates from public service. Both these issues have been of long-term concern to conservatives, and no other candidate has articulated them so forcefully in this cycle, if ever.

It legitimately can be debated whether Mr. Gingrich is the ideal vehicle for either message, but that should not blind us to the messages themselves. Republicans are looking for a candidate who will fight destructive stereotypes, and who will refuse to pander to salacious ratings-grabbing. This isn't just a debating trick. If Mr. Gingrich understands that it is the deeper demonstration of strength rather than simply his facility with the zinger that truly resonates, he may well and finally emerge from the ashes.

Weinergate: This Is No Joke

Like most parents, I have become adept at the rapid fire muting of the satellite radio when shepherding my children around in the car. Not only are the ads wildly inappropriate, but the news itself is not far behind. To wit, this morning when they caught a few sentences of Weinergate.

The natural impulse is to shield them from the squalor, to turn off the radio and change the subject. But this time I thought I owed it to them to try to explain what was going on. After all, both of them have iPods that take pictures and that can connect to wifi. They have gmail accounts. This activity is monitored of course, but would I really be able to catch every single misstep that happened at a sleepover or at camp before it became part of the flotsam and jetsam of the internet? Looking in the rearview mirror at them on this, their last day of school, they seemed so young--but the hard reality is that Anthony Weiner's correspondents were not so very much older (that we know), and grew up in this information age in which it is not only commonplace to be in direct cyber-contact with a famous congressman, but also for that contact to become intimate in a very public and permanent way.

Deep breath.

We talked about the pictures our family had taken this weekend at a horse show that had been posted online, and the people that had seen them and commented on them--a process they thoroughly enjoy. We discussed the things they circulate around their limited set of email correspondants, and how messages are forwarded but you still keep a copy and you can't control what happens to what is sent on. Then we talked about Mr. Weiner, and how those pictures and messages can go from being fun and friendly into the realm of inappropriate. My son has been chastised for over-use of the term "weiner" as he pointed out this morning--in a funny way it helped us navigate the difficult territory but I needed them to understand this was not something to snicker at, but rather something serious that could touch their lives if they weren't careful.

Anthony Weiner's disgrace is a painful reminder to all of us of the fraility and blindness that appears to be an eternal componant of the human condition. But it might also serve as an opportunity to draw attention to its new manifestiation in in our increasingly ubiquitous social media, and to help those coming of age in this environment--an opportunity he squandered yesterday. In my opinion, the Congressman's greatest mistake in his press conference was referring to his interaction with the college student in Seattle as a "joke"--something lighthearted and that anyone might do. It was a shameful word choice that sends precisely the wrong message to others who might engage in such behavior, or who are already doing it. Taking explicit photos of yourself and posting them in any forum, be it public or private, is no prank gone awry. It is a dangerous and potentially damaging--even damning--thing to do.

Mr. Weiner's name has been the source of endless jokes over the last ten days, and his activities certainly invite ridicule. But the seriousness of this type of behavior and its lasting ramifications are no joke.

Erasing History: The Perils of the Pre-1967 Proposal

There seems to be some confusion over why the Israelis should be so hostile to President Obama's suggestion that the two-state solution be achieved by returning the Jewish state to its 1967 borders. The President's supporters argue that since these borders were previously acceptable to Israel, they should be acceptable now. After all, pre-1967 Israel fought to defend those borders and they were on the table in the 2000 peace talks. Can 45 years make that much of a difference?

It is true that 45 years is not so very long in terms of the territorial integrity of the United States. We might even prefer to return to the 1967 context in which our borders were much less challenging than they are today. But what Mr. Obama seems to fail to understand is that 45 years is a very long time for Israel. While the history of the Israeli people stretches back millennia, lsrael itself has only existed for 63 years. What the President is asking is that more than 70% of that history be erased, beginning with the reasons it was deemed necessary to annex the territories in 1967, and continuing on through the failed diplomatic initiatives, UN humiliations and relentless, deadly terrorist attacks of the past decades (including the last one, as Jeff Emanuel discussed yesterday). While some have considered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's terse response to this proposal disrespectful of the President, Mr. Netanyahu might have some very real concerns that once three-quarters of Israel's past has been eradicated, would it be all that outlandish to go all the way to pre-1948? Especially under the leadership of an American president who is asking the Israelis to make this concession on the dubious grounds that "hope" will overcome "hate"?

Mr. Obama justified his pre-1967 proposal yesterday by declaring "[t]he dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation." While rhetorically it sounded nice and cleverly recalled Martin Luther King's iconic speech, the choice of the word "dream" to describe a sovereign state was a curious one. Perhaps for our President Israel is still an abstract phantasm that might or might not exist, but for others it has been a reality for the last 63 years. Israel has the right to all of its history, and all of its territory.

The Silver Lining to L'Affair DSK

The abrupt arrest of IMF acting head Dominique Strauss-Kahn on charges of sexual assault against an employee at the New York hotel where he was staying are being treated as shocking in France. This is a "coup de tonnerre," a bolt from the blue, not to mention a body blow to the socialist party he was to represent in the upcoming elections. Everyone in Paris claims to be amazed, shaken--and doing some soul searching this Monday morning.

Very few, however, are protesting "DSK"'s innocence. But if the news really came as such a jarring surprise, shouldn't there be a clamour of disbelief? The shameful fact is that this news was not so much a shock as a long time coming.

In 2006, French journalists Christophe Deloire and Christophe Dubois wrote a book called Sexus Politicus about the colorful sexual lives of French politicians. While the American press tended to focus on the revelations about politicians of whom they had heard (Chirac, Mitterand, Sarkozy), the book also contained a chapter on risky, aggressive sexual behavior--titled "L'Affair DSK." As Mr. Deloire wrote in today's Le Monde, the media's strange code of silence about sexual abuse at the high levels of government may well have permitted, if not enabled, DSK's most recent offense. Egregiously, this book was published the year before Strauss-Kahn became head of the IMF--the year he was accused of rape by French journalist Tristane Banon who just happened to be Strauss-Kahn's wife's goddaughter, not to mention 30 years his junior (the French police declined to press charges in 2007, but may reconsider now). Less than 12 months later, DSK was back in the news, this time for having an affair with IMF subordinate Paula Nagy, in the course of which he abused his official position, as he later admitted.


2006-07 also happened to be the period that saw the moralizing witch hunt of Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank over claimed favoritism that advanced the career of his companion, Shaha Ali Riza (claims that the World Bank itself found without merit, but no matter, Mr. Wolfowitz still had to resign). The discrepancies between the treatment of Mr. Wolfowitz and DSK were noted at the time, but DSK kept his job and continued his activities unimpeded by the moral and legal issues constraining the behavior of lesser mortals--and why shouldn't he? Clearly he was well above the law.

Until Saturday night, that is, when DSK found himself not up against the complaint authorities of more sophisticated nations that turn a blind eye to such escapades, and instead at the mercy of the NYPD. Even though DSK's most recent victim was yet another young woman many years his junior in a comparatively weak position, she found solace in the law. For his part, DSK is entitled under that same law to the presumption of innocence as the case unfolds but at the very least it is time to stop calling Strauss-Kahn by the Casanova-like title of "le grand séducteur" and instead understand him, as Ms. Banon declared, as "a rutting chimpanze."

If there is a silver lining to this sordid episode, it is that l'affair DSK provides an opportunity to shine a harsh light on the tacit condonement of sexual abuse in the world's theoretically-charitable institutions ranging from the U.N. to the Peace Corps. While the vast majority of the victims have suffered in anonymous silence, DSK can provide a very famous face and ample publicity to this dirty little secret that has been kept for far too long--and if this case can force some much-needed reform and accounability then Strauss-Kahn may finally do some good, however unwillingly.

Congratulations, Israel, on 63 years

63 years ago, Israel was established, giving the Jewish people their own state. Over the ensuing decades the tiny country has been attacked with everything from sticks and stones in its own sovereign territory to words in the hallowed halls of the United Nations. Through a combination of ceaseless vigilance and sheer faith the people of Israel have persevered in the face of relentless bombardment of hard and soft bigotry--not to mention rockets--and not only persevered but prospered.

Israel has achieved amazing things given its small size and precarious location. Its hulking neighbors, notably oil-rich Iran, seem poised to swallow it up--yet Iran is the one facing unemployment and popular discontent. Israel on the other hand is open for business, boasting an advanced and prosperous industrial economy that welcomes international investment despite security concerns. Furthermore, Israel is notably helpful in the region, doing good deeds such as striking Iraq and Syria's nascent nuclear programs. Some see our friendship with Israel as a one-way street and advocate cutting aid, but we might find ourselves feeling surprisingly lonely if we pursued that short-sighted policy.

While we contemplate the so-called "Arab spring" with all its exciting promises of spreading democracy, we would do well to remember the free state that has been our good friend for these many years. While the President may take this opportunity to chide the Israelis about achieving a "two-state solution" and sharing their "peace, prosperity and dignity" with "all the people of the region," I prefer Senator Marco Rubio's suggestion that we mark the occasion by remembering that "we must always support [Israel's] right to secure and defend its territory and people."

I join Senator Rubio in wishing joyful and blessed Yom Ha’atzmaut to all our friends in Israel.

Some thoughts on inheritance

"Inheritance" is a neutral word--it can be bad and good depending on the circumstance. You dont get to pick what you get any more than you can pick your parents. On the one hand, you have things like photo albumns and trusts funds. On the other you have the lasting repercussions of bad behavior, the sins of the father if you will, that can reach down across generations. Most of us inherit a combination of the two from our predecessors, hopefully with more of the former than the

This construct applies to presidents as well. You begin the job basically beholden to your predecessor, who has created the circumstances under which you have to try to do your job. Indeed, your first year is in many ways the political equivalent of adolescence, as you try to break away from the existing model and establish your own identity. This process can be particularly dramatic when you have successive presidents of opposing political parties.

So we have seen President Obama rebel against the Bush administration legacy throughout both his campaign and his first twenty-seven months in office. Calling attention to his inherited burdens, particularly at home but also abroad, has been a constant refrain in Obama's rhetoric, an inevitable codicil to any policy announcement. To date, these references have been exclusively negative and pejorative, and to be honest many Americans suffering from an extended economic downturn and weary of the lengthy foreign wars have tended to accept these statements at face value.

The events of the last five days strongly suggest that there was something else in that heritage, something of great and lasting value even if it was shrouded and reviled like some ugly and unwanted family object foisted on a new generation with no taste for such things. In this case, rather than a breakfront or silver service we are talking about detention operations in the global war on terror, that impossibly difficult but unavoidable challenge President Bush and his administration confronted in the years after 9/11.

Those who grappled with this issue have been the most reviled of the previous administration. While Treasury Secretaries and budget directors go largely unreviled, anyone who had to deal with detainees, their capture, incarceration and interrogation, have been roundly attacked as at best ignorant and parochial, and at worst eager to torment innocents in a dark campaign to subvert our most precious values, our true jewels of civil liberties. Compared to the worst monsters in history--i.e. Pol Pot, the Nazis--they have had few defenders as it has seemed a losing battle to try to argue for what has been widely accepted as "torture", a corrupt and defunct practice. It has been so easy to disavow these activites, perhaps with the caveat that such things might have seemed necessary in the early days after 9/11 when we feared another attack, but that attack didn't come and even if we dont utterly condemn, we know better.

Now that our most deadly enemy rests with the fishes thanks to the intelligence gathered from those detainees, a welcome development removing both a real and present security threat and a painful shared psychological burden, these policies emerge in a different light. Rather than a shameful inheritance, they have been a gift, painstakingly crafted behind layers of classification and legal necessity. As time and events peel those layers away like so many layers of tarnish, we might want to be prepared for more unexpected revelations that make the easy poses of moral superiority that have been so fashionable over the past seven years increasingly uncomfortable and difficult to defend.

While it is naive to expect President Obama will overtly acknowledge this heritage either today at Ground Zero or at anytime in the coming election season, we can hope that his actions will speak more loudly than his words. As he has recognized the necessity of the DoD dentention facility at Guantanamo he may now understand the necessity of those CIA interrogators who are still under investigation for the very practices that ultimately got Osama bin Laden. Perhaps today when he stands where his predecessor stood in those terrible days after the 9/11 attacks he will understand what he has truly inherited.

Osama's Image

via John Koblin (@koblin), we have a new Time cover, to be published on a special Osama bin Laden issue due out Thursday. It is a remarkable contrast to the Time cover from almost a decade ago.

Notice how the now-deceased Osama has been transformed from the intent, active terrorist-in-motion of 2001 into a smooth impassive icon. Except for the glaring, dripping red X he could almost be a work of art. In fact, it seems Time's editors had a work of art in mind.

Head of an Akkadian ruler, from Nineveh, 2300-2200 BC. Bronze, 12ins high. National Museum, Baghdad.

While the Head and the second Time cover are readily recognizable as individuals, they also are idealized using the same devices such as preternaturally smooth skin, crown-like turbans and stylized beards. They have both also been ritually defaced in a manner that would be immediately recognized by their contemporary audiences. Time opted for the simple but effective red X, while the denizens of the Ancient Near East took the process a step farther. The Head was ripped from its body, had its eyes gauged out with a blunt instrument, and was buried in a garbage pit--what you might call the full SEAL treatment for the time.

Four millenia have removed any memory of the Akkadian ruler's personality. We don't know his name, let alone if he were a murdering monster like Osama or a fallen hero unjustly deposed and despoiled. Yet this haunting image of endures to inform Time's visualization of the dead Osama, making me wonder what viewers--if any--4,000 years hence will make of that magazine cover.

Today, They Should Hear All Of Us

The news of Osama bin Laden's demise has been a long time coming--so long in fact that it has taken some hours to sink in and become real. A decade can be a long time when you are grieving and angry and needful of closure. The scenes of jubilation that spread from ballpark to subway to the White House seemed like a movie in the wee hours of this morning, and while others will opine on the details of today's momentous event, I find myself reflecting on the road that brought us here.

The seemingly endless--and hopeless--search for OBL had threatened to become our nation's Moby Dick, an obsessive quest that destroys not only the prey but also the predator. Our collective unresolved need to "get" the man who ordered those planes to fly into our buildings quickly became a cancer that turned citizen against citizen, and provoked some of the harshest partisanship I have witnessed.

But now we have OBL, and it is an opportunity for us to prove ourselves as Americans. For those of us on the right, we should simply thank God for a CIA Director who took the time to develop the appropriate plan, a Secretary of Defense who lent him sufficient man and firepower, and a President who was decisive enough to pull the trigger at the right moment. This sort of leadership should not be parsed or resented. For their part, our fellow citizens on the left might consider giving up the relentless drumbeat of "war crimes" for those who did so much of the long and lonely work to make this possible. Even with the so-called "harsh" interrogation techniques used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it took years to put together the pieces. How many regret those techniques this morning, or that we had Guantanamo to house KSM and his colleagues for further reference?

If we on both sides can make these respective leaps we will truly have killed our white whale, and not annihilated ourselves in the process. This is not to say that we will be singing kumbaya together over the debt ceiling tomorrow, nor should we. But we will have met a great challenge, as so many generations of Americans have done, together. While the war may not be over, that would be a tremendous victory, and Osama bin Laden's ultimate defeat.

Shuffling the Deck Chairs, Yet Again

If you are on the Titanic, it doesn't matter where you sit.

In the most recent Obama administration shake up, Bob Gates will be leaving the Department of Defense, Leon Pannetta will move from the CIA to DoD, General David Petraeus will move from Afghanistan to the CIA and Ryan Crocker will move from Texas A&M (from whence came Bob Gates) to Afghanistan. As in the previous major changes in the White House staff and the economic team, competent, experienced hands are being replaced by...competent experienced hands. And so as Rahm Emanuel became Bill Daley and Larry Summers became Gene Sperling, we witness another changing of the guard designed to right the course of this haphazardly lurching administration that cannot seem to find its footing either at home or abroad.

The problem is that the root of the issue may not lie with the staff, but rather with the person doing the staffing.

Looking at this most recent reorganization, I have to ask what it will achieve? Putting partisanship aside, I do not question the competence of Panetta, Petraeus and Crocker, or their patriotism. They are all proven public servants, and certainly as qualified to hold their new positions as many who have come before them. But these appointments promise little improvement in our foreign policy and national security, which continues to be directed by a President who cannot or will not get his team moving in a coherent direction.

Mr. Obama famously campaigned on a message of change, and in general change can be good--that is if it is change with a purpose. But there is a sort of grim sameness to these changes. More "gown-ups" are being called in, more of the non-partisan career types who will make the trains run on time. But it is increasingly apparent that these trains, even if they be efficiently managed high-speed ones, have no particular destination and we are in a global situation in which a lack of policy is even worse than a bad policy.

The best hope is that the President will shake himself free from his inclination to respond to individual events based on the recommendation of the loudest voice in the room at the moment--perhaps in the hopes of silencing the ruckus--and develop a serious vision for his foreign policy team. That hope, however, may prove to be as ephemeral as Mr. Obama's campaign rhetoric. We will more likely settle for hoping Messrs. Panetta, Petraeus, and Crocker (and is it cynical to expect we are going to hear Mr. Gates' name again before January, 2012?) can hold things together in their respective fiefdoms for the next twenty months, and that we don't encounter too many icebergs in the interim.

Published at Redstate.com

Nancy Pelosi Is Right: Elections Shouldn't Matter As Much As They do

In an ideal world, of course.

Speaking at Tufts University on April 8th, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had one of those marvelous moments of self-revelation in which a usually polished politician speaking casually and without a script among like-minded friends says what everyone is thinking--what everyone knows to be true--in this case what is considered an unquestionable "fact" by their audience. As you can see from the video, there was not a murmur when Pelosi circled around to her punch line that "elections should not matter as much as they do." She went on to lament that the lack of "shared values" had lead to the unpleasantness of last Friday in Congress with all the shouting and staying up late and worries over who would get to keep their Blackberrys.

The thing is, Pelosi is right. Elections are burdensome things. They are expensive, intrusive and all to frequently unfair. Even when you win, the cycle of fundraising and campaigning distracts from the business at hand.

Elections are particularly burdensome when you lose. Then their inconvenience becomes glaringly apparent. New crops of politicos have to be trained over and over again to do the same tasks as their predecessors. Perfectly able, even accomplished lawmakers are routinely tossed out on their ears to make way for the ignorant and green. Majorities and minorities ebb and flow, leading to confusion over policy and priorities. Your treasured projects, nursed and nurtured in good faith, are threatened by the newcomers who do not share your values--who may in fact be devoid of values altogether and may nip those tender shoots in the bud.

Really when you look at it from Pelosi's perspective, it all seems at best counter-intuitive and at worst barely civilized.

There has been some well-founded outrage at Pelosi's apparent disdain for the democratic process stemming from post-2008 mid-term sour grapes. I suspect, however, that the root of the problem for those of us who find her remarks disturbing rather than self-evident is less the word "election" and more the word "shared"--as in the values Pelosi believes we must all have in common to achieve a utopia free from those burdensome elections.

Variants of "share" are popular in President Obama's rhetoric as well, and I expect we will hear it several times from him this afternoon. I have noticed it as a curiously condescending word choice from a politician who is in my age group recalling what you would expect to hear from a parent or teacher, a disconnect he does not appear to see. It seems he understands the term differently. This new "sharing" is transitioning from being the free exercise of generosity--a learned trait for most humans--to being an obligatory act of subjugation to the state. You do not learn to share as a moral choice; you are told to do it. Should you attempt not to share what is yours--be it values or money--this government seems increasingly eager to put you back on the path of righteousness.

I find I am not comfortable with this obligatory sharing. I am one of those who do not consider pregnancy to be a punishment or gainful employment to be a prison. I am not eager to share my values with those who disagree on the first point or my money with those who differ on the second. As we consider the calls for us all to just get along, Nancy Pelosi's off-hand comment serves as a useful reminder of what too much compromise--too much sharing--can get us.

As unfortunate as it may seem at times, elections must continue to be our burden to bear.

No Comment: Obama administration silence on the Jerusalem bombing is pathetic

Earlier today a bomb exploded on a crowded public bus outside the Jerusalem convention center, injuring more than 40 people. As Jennifer Rubin reports via Hareetz, this is the worst terrorist attack in the city in seven years, and given recent terrorist aggression against Israel out of Gaza, particularly disturbing.

The Obama administration response to this atrocity is stunning silence. Rubin also reports that no one has bothered to make contact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The most recent messages on the State Department home page address World Water Day and Ending Violence Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.

Gene Simmons is doing a better job of standing with Israel these days than the United States is. It is just pathetic.

LETTERS
The Wall Street Journal
March 22, 2011

Documentation in Rumsfeld's Memoir Is Unprecedented

Peggy Noonan's strange outburst in the Journal's March 12 edition appears to be more about Ms. Noonan's unresolved personal issues with the Bush administration than about the substance of Donald Rumsfeld's book ("The Defense Secretary Who Let Bin Laden Get Away," Declarations). Bizarrely, she rails against the documentation in "Known and Unknown," claiming that "most memos prove nothing." Since Ms. Noonan does not like what the documents say, she has attempted to discredit them. As Mr. Rumsfeld's director of research, I would like to offer another and quite different view of this material, and how it was used in the memoir.

Mr. Rumsfeld decided when he embarked on this project in 2007 that his memoir would not be a collection of personal reminiscences, but rather a more substantive undertaking that would make use of his extensive records. A defining feature of the Rumsfeld collection is the original working function of the different types of documents. They were very much of their moment, written not for some abstract future history but to contend with the issues of the day.

While it is true as Ms. Noonan notes that some of these documents suggest Mr. Rumsfeld was not exclusively culpable for everything that went wrong in American foreign policy 2001-2006, they also fill other functions—for example to record his pride at supporting the 1964 Civil Rights legislation, his concerns over President Gerald Ford's refusal to meet with Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and the successful Bush administration efforts at military transformation. For those who recognize that such documents provide an important foundation for historical analysis, they play a critical—and fascinating—supporting role in this project.

Readers and other interested parties can review them by "Known and Unknown" endnotes, as well as browse more than 2,000 additional documents in the "Library" section on the website. Additional future releases are planned. The goal is to give the public the means to read the full documents—and not just those Mr. Rumsfeld cited in his book or the passages he selected for the text—to reach their own conclusions about the events he witnessed. The documents contain errors, typos and the occasional awkward observation. But Mr. Rumsfeld concluded it was worth risking possible misunderstandings to give readers the opportunity to review the same materials he did when preparing the book.

As an academic and historian, I do not find the liberal use of this material in "Known and Unknown" to be "disturbing" as Ms. Noonan does, but see it rather as an important and exciting advancement of the boundaries of archival research. External factors such as time and location have long restricted access to primary documents to specialists. Now this material can be freely shared, even though it might be unsettling to those in the media who are used to controlling the flow of information to the public. The results can be far more substantive and responsible than the emotion-driven narratives fueled by conventional wisdom that constitute many popular histories. It is to be hoped that serious readers of "Known and Unknown" will understand the Rumsfeld documents in this context.

Victoria Coates, Ph.D.

Director of Research

Office of Donald Rumsfeld

Washington

Bidding A Sad Farewell to Peggy Noonan

I have a few sad thoughts to add to this more thorough, magisterial deconstruction of Peggy Noonan’s column today on Donald Rumsfeld’s Known and Unknown.

Through the years I have tried to like Noonan, primarily because there are so few prominent female writers on major editorial pages, and even fewer conservatives. Also, as she frequently reminds us, she worked for Ronald Reagan and what is not to like about that?

Unfortunately, today's column is so far beyond the pale that even these powerful attractions cannot redeem her in my eyes. Noonan goes after Rumsfeld, who she declares devoid of "guts" and "brains," and his “stupid little” book too (I hope that "little" book didn't make too big of a hole in her plaster when she threw it at the wall, but I digress). Her main beef is that Rumsfeld failed both to capture Osama Bin Laden and to understand how the American psyche needed his capture after 9/11. Since as she again likes to remind us Noonan was in Manhattan on 9/11, she has claimed the mantle of Everyvictim and knows what all of us need, much more than Rumsfeld who after all was only in the Pentagon that day. We are treated to Noonan's OBL revenge fantasies, which involve scatological imagery and decapitation, and to her fury that Rumsfeld has not facilitated their satisfaction.

Noonan reserves, bizarrely, special vitriol for the documentation of Known and Unknown, and I may well take this part of the review personally since I have labored for some years in that particular salt mine. Noonan seems terribly put out that Rumsfeld has used a rich archive going back seven decades to document his book. She mocks and caricatures the effort--and darkly hints the memos might be falsified. She laments that "so many" Bush administration memoirs depend on primary documents (I can't think of another with even remotely comparable documentation--certainly not one that offers the reader the opportunity to freely consult the documents--but again, I digress). In the end she finds their presence so odious that she wants to physically dismember the book--to literally break its spine--for so oppressing her. These memos, she rages, "prove nothing."

I find all of this startling, since I generally consider it a good and useful exercise to go back to the original documents in order to build up thorough historical analysis. My complaints are reserved for those who selectively quote documents and then withhold the originals, so readers are forced to accept the writer's conclusions. Given the advances in digital technology, Rumsfeld has decided to challenge this construct and not only quote and cite the memos in his book, but also release thousands of them on a free-access website where they are available to readers made of sterner stuff than Noonan as links in a facsimile of the endnotes while the larger collection is browsable in a library-style section.

What is so gob-smackingly awful about this? Why ferociously attack an effort at rigorous scholarship and documentary transparency? Who does it hurt?

Upon reflection, it occurred to me that it hurts Peggy Noonan, who has been trading on her "insider" status in the Reagan administration for decades now. She is the source, in her parlance the witness, and if people take to releasing the actual documents, her fly-on-the-wall reminiscences drop precipitously in value, especially if God forbid the two conflict.

Perhaps not coincidentally, another potential victim of Rumsfeld's memo offensive is Noonan's fellow perennial insider, Bob Woodward, whose stock in trade is giving the impression of witnessing what should be hidden--accounts that generally confirm readers' vague suspicions about what must be going on in government--thus making the reader feel smart and in the know, and making Woodward's books sell.

Woodward, like Noonan, seems to feel threatened by Known and Unknown, and went after the book last week, calling Rumsfeld a liar for writing in Chapter 31 about a meeting with President Bush on September 26, 2001, in which Bush asked Rumsfeld to review the Iraq war plan then on the Pentagon shelf. Woodward's beef appears to be not with the wisdom of this order, but rather with the problematic fact that no account of it appears in Woodward's books on the Bush administration, and he had made a great show of re-tracing the definitive Iraq timeline. Ergo, the meeting did not happen, and even if it did, Iraq was not discussed.

Unfortunately for Woodward, Rumsfeld had made a handwritten note about the substance of his meeting on his calendar for that day, which he promptly released. It matches in all details the account in Known and Unknown. Woodward appeared to have given up this line of attack--wisely, for what else is there to say?--until the Noonan column appeared today to denigrate and dismiss Rumsfeld's documentation explicitly, and so to defend Woodward implicitly.

I have no insider information on a particular friendship between Noonan and Woodward, although she has been know to give Woodward's books pretty fulsome praise. All I have is the widely-available public knowledge that Noonan and Woodward are regular co-panelists on "Meet the Press." In late December, 2010, for example, they were on to discuss the general distastefulness that is Sarah Palin. Noonan had recently called Palin "ignorant" and a "nincompoop" for daring to tread where only Noonan is privileged to go--that is to discuss Ronald Reagan. Noonan could therefore be trusted to toe the MTP line, and she obligingly if revealingly referred to herself and her fellow panelists (Doris Kerns Goodwin, Tom Brokaw and Woodward) as people like us--people who are sophisticated enough to recognize Palin for what she is--while the rest of America who either admire her or don't care much either way are them.

So for Noonan, Woodward is "people like us," the special few who have the exclusive right to tell the rest of us what is really going on unhampered by things like proper documentation. In this context, no wonder she finds Rumsfeld's archive so distressing. It hits her where she lives, threatening to reveal that her shtick, like Woodward’s, is based on self-serving, selective and unsubstantiated memories and, even worse, forcing her to do her homework if she wants to be considered in the same league.

True, documentary research is hard. It involves tedious work sifting through many, many irrelevant documents to find the few of importance. It requires you to check your cherished preconceived notions at the door and let the information in the documents guide your analysis, even if you uncover things you do not expect--or want--to find. And it forces you to admit, as Rumsfeld has so famously done, that there are things you did not know. But as difficult as the exercise might be, the end goal of trying to pass on to future generations direct observations of historical events accompanied by relevant primary documentation is in my opinion a noble one and well worth the effort. I don't think I want to read anything else by someone so determined to discredit the attempt.

Good bye, Ms. Noonan, and good luck to you in this brave new world of history.