Don't Forget About Terrorism

By Andrew Collins

Terrorism is still on the public agenda, but media outlets and public intellectuals have got the emphasis all wrong. Our primary focus should be destroying terrorist networks, not poking legalistic holes in our efforts and undermining ourselves to terrorists' advantage.

How quickly we forget the lessons of 9/11. Less than five years after that unimaginable tragedy, terrorism is now almost entirely discussed in the context of preventing the overreach of law enforcement agencies, government, and the military. Civil liberties and prisoner rights are the buzzwords.

It is indeed important to ensure that the War on Terror is prosecuted with due respect to civil and human rights. The Bush administration appears to have broken the law with its domestic espionage program, and certain measures legalized by the USA PATRIOT Act are among the most draconian ever seen in the United States. We must not let our anti-terrorism efforts compromise the rights of any our citizens--or anyone, for that matter.

But there is a balance to be struck, and the self-flagellating now crowds out journalism demanding creativity, aggressiveness, and results in fighting terror. The tenor of public discussion comes dangerously close, at times, to sounding pro-terrorist. The news media spends little time on stories about fighting terrorism beyond the unavoidable events like the plan to bomb Chicago's Sears Tower and a crawling "Elevated" terror status on cable news stations--which, by the way, remains distinctly unhelpful.

Why does it matter what the public talks about, when the War on Terror is being waged by law enforcement agencies, bureaucrats, and elected officials? Several reasons: For one, everyone fighting the War on Terror is susceptible to public pressure; if the public demands caution and discretion, officials will take note. Secondly, a less-than-full-throttle sentiment toward the War on Terror leaves open the frightening possibility of a pansy civil libertarian being elected President and leaving the United States more susceptible to attack. It is an unlikely scenario, but one that has become considerably more plausible with the present press distaste for the War on Terror.

The roots of the media/intellectual complex's passive rejection of the War on Terror are easy to identify. Foremost, time has eroded the searing, universal sense of post-9/11 urgency. Everyone from David Letterman to Tom Brokaw was a fervent anti-terrorist in those days; the regression of many of these public figures was predicable. There is also the general anti-Bush sentiment in the media, borne not of partisanship but of the administration's secrecy and antipathy toward the media. There is no doubt that some journalists and media organizations relish "sticking it to the administration" in their coverage of the War on Terror.

The media is either creating or communicating a standard storyline in the War on Terror: disaster (9/11), strong response (Afghanistan, tightening of security and financial transactions), overreach (USA PATRIOT Act, Iraq, prisoner abuses), and redress (country turns on President Bush, Iraq becomes a debacle, executive powers are checked). At the conclusion of this narrative arc, the overreach is to be fixed and we are all supposed to return to "normal." The problem is, "normal" is not where we want to be, as long as we are facing terrorists who preach an ideology of hate and murder. It is a long-term fight, and we need to adjust permanently. The media's storyline befits a one-time event, but the current struggle is much closer to the Cold War and should not be tied up in a tidy bow after a few years.

About the only thing that can be done to rectify the current situation is for editors and media executives to realize that the public interest is well served by holding leaders to the fire on the aggressiveness of their anti-terror efforts. Unveiling and criticizing espionage programs is important, but not anywhere close to half the battle.

The War on Terror is an exceptional fight, requiring vigilance, and routine political pressures and press tendencies are harming our ability to win it. We need to bear down as hard as we can on terrorists, and we need coverage to tilt back into better balance. Forward-looking, not navel-gazing.

If we don't get our perspective straight, they will damn sure do it for us. Please, don't let it be another terrorist strike against America that jolts us into an aggressive posture once more.

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR: In Praise of Diplomacy

By Andrew Nowobilski

If I were king of the West, I would heap every praise on today’s diplomats and their partisans in the political press. I would hold conferences, of the type where little is accomplished, but that lack of accomplishment is executed with precision, formality, and delicious continental breakfasts. I would invite them to lavish state dinners, entertain them in person and nod and harumph in concord with their erudite ruminations. Yes, yes Ambassador So-and-So. You are so very right. War is the last resort. M-hm. We must give the United Nations time--oh yes, indeed! Surely a peaceable solution is just at hand.

Oh yes, and I would ignore their advice completely.

As Israel exacts payment from Hezbollah for years of “shit”-giving--and let President Bush be commended for his way with words--we can be grateful that our President is wisely ignoring the squawking of diplomats for a cease-fire. And yet it is an incredible thing to witness. Diplomats require incentives and punishments in order to move world leaders. Even non-radical Middle Eastern rulers are surrounded on every side by danger, physical or political--from their neighbors, from the Islamic extremists, from the West. They do not possess the luxury of making decisions based on personal warmth or expressions of world sentiment that exist only on parchment or in sound-bites. And yet whenever a country employs force to transform the political calculus of the region and place a trump card in the hands of future diplomats, they protest. No aces for us, please. We’d much rather fold.

When Israel attacks Southern Lebanon, it is essentially rounding out the Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine is a blessing to diplomats everywhere, for--consistently applied--it vests them with real power in prodding the dictators and tribesmen of the Middle East and elsewhere to clean house. That power is the knowledge that a failure to dismantle terrorist organizations has dire consequences. When a government like Lebanon’s fails to expel its terrorist elements, the use of Israeli force is appropriate, even if Lebanon harbors no malicious intentions. If Lebanon does not possess resources to rule, then diplomacy won’t help anyway.

But if Lebanon actually does possess the resources to police itself, then states in the same predicament in the future will “find” the resources to police themselves, because their own security depends on it. Israel is just forcing Lebanon to “internalize” its Hezbollah-related externalities. Just think how effective diplomats could be if other nations expected us to consistently act in like manner when they failed to cooperate with our fine diplomatic corps. Imagine the headlines: British negotiators convince General Ali Despotarrafi to eject al Qaeda from Somewhere-istan. Imagine the praises showered down upon the diplomats! Imagine the clucking on the New York Times editorial page. See, we told you diplomacy could work!

The war of words between the diplomats and hawks over Iran’s pursuit of nuclear warheads is even sillier. Let’s side with the diplomats. Now Mr. Ambassador, under what circumstances could we imagine President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad agreeing to genuinely forestall his nuclear efforts for the foreseeable future? There are two possibilities. The first is that we bribe him. Now, there is a good chance this would have no effect on a good, stoic, maniacal Muslim extremist like Ahmadinejad. But even if this strategy succeeded, it would establish a lamentable precedent that would encourage future brinkmanship on the part of other despots. And for all this, the US could do nothing to prevent Iran from reneging in the future for the purposes of extracting additional concessions while inching ever closer to nuclear status.

The second possibility is to instill in Ahmadinejad the certainty that failure to comply will result not in glory and honor but defeat and humiliation. One option takes the anarchy of the international system seriously and deals with it frankly; the other does not. One attempts to get foreign leaders to act in a way that it is not in their own interests to act; the other changes what those interests are by altering expectations.

The Israeli campaign is one expression of a larger strategic philosophy that, if taken seriously, would alter the political calculus for the future so that next time diplomacy can succeed. Diplomacy in the Global War on Terror requires the threat of force, the credibility of which depends on its consistent application against those who continue to support terrorism despite our supplications. The West should always offer a window for rapprochement if her enemies reject terrorism; but that window must have a definite length and breadth, and once that window closes the hammer must fall. Then maybe next time, another despot will heed our ambassadors.

I like diplomats; I really do. That’s why if I were king I would just ignore them sometimes. I’d be doing them a favor. All I’d ask in return is another continental breakfast.

Andrew Nowobilski is a senior at Duke University.

The United States Goes to War

By Andrew Collins

The world has reacted to Israel’s bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon with mystification and outrage. Many cannot see sense in Israel unleashing hell “against an organization” in a relatively friendly neighboring state, particularly when the head of the hydra can be found in Syria and Iran. What is really going on here?

As it turns out, a lot. The current conflict has a deep subtext that interweaves the same big strands of Iraq, Iran, Israel, terrorism, democracy, Shi’ites, Sunnis, and the United States that have long shaped this region’s destiny. Think of the violence not as Israel versus Hezbollah or Israel versus Lebanon, but the United States versus Iran. We have entered what promises to be a protracted war, watching, in Ted Koppel’s assessment, the first proxy battle.

In grasping the magnitude of the conflict, it is important to realize that President Bush must have given Israel the green light to attack Hezbollah. The United States is Israel’s only meaningful ally. A scenario in which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wages a large-scale military operation without ensuring President Bush’s blessing does not make sense. Were the United States to vocalize opposition to the strikes, Israel would be isolated, condemned, and markedly less secure.

So the United States and Israel are confronting an unsatisfactory status quo against an enemy. The nature of this enemy is not what it superficially seems. Hezbollah is a serpentine terrorist structure that uses Lebanon as a launch base and storehouse but is supported financially by Syria and is most properly conceived of as an appendage of Iran.

Assaulting Hezbollah in Lebanon is not going to dismantle it. The United States and Israel know this. By raising the stakes in such a visible and aggressive way, they have laid down the gauntlet on destroying Hezbollah as the only acceptable option. This means confronting its power sources, a proposition that necessarily puts the United States and Iran in direct conflict.

The United States already has a litany of well known grievances against Iran, the aggregate of which already merits a war in the minds of many US intellectuals and policymakers. Iran supports Hezbollah and other organizations that terrorize Israel and the United States, undermines the fledgling democracy in Afghanistan, wields ominous influence over Iraq, and promises to “wipe Israel off the face of the map.” Then there is that whole nuclear thing.

With the strikes against Hezbollah, the United States now has a foothold from which it can expand the conflict with Iran. The administration’s chosen next step is to engage Syria and further isolate Shi’ite, Persian Iran from its Sunni, Arab neighbor states. This is a destabilizing step that could precipitate a variety of positive or negative results, including, possibly, a groundswell of anti-Iran machinations in the region.

Mistrust and fear of Iran is vast in the Middle East. Despite the even deeper antipathy toward Israel and the United States, several Sunni countries went so far as to tacitly support Israel in its recent military action. “The street” generally supports Hezbollah against Israel because of the conflict’s David-versus-Goliath qualities, but many also acknowledge that Iran is one of the primary obstacles to a peace settlement between Israel and Palestinians and the creation of Palestine. Were a choice reduced to achieving Palestinian goals or supporting Iran’s marauding, most Arabs would abandon Iran. Isolating Iran could possibly constitute a “victory” for the United States in a limited war that never turns hot.

The goals could be more sweeping, however. With regional support, it is not hard to imagine the United States engaging in military action against Iran. The US administration holds no illusions about the threat posed by a country in the world’s toughest neighborhood with resources, a deranged leader, an expressed desire to eradicate another nation, a record of financing terrorism, and—soon—nuclear weapons. The United States is not about to sack Tehran for now, but depending on how events play out with Syria and Lebanon, it is well within the realm of possibility.

A strategy that relies in any part upon Arab support could also backfire, however. Confronting Iran could grant it additional status as an anti-US force and produce sympathy and sycophantism toward the big dog on the block. That may significantly limit US options, or it may further convince leaders that Iran needs to be checked before its power and sociopathic proclivities spiral out of control.

The United States has been playing a high-stakes game of engagement in the Middle East for some time now, but the intensity has ratcheted up considerably with Israel’s recent military incursion. We’re in a war now, and our enemy is Iran. God have mercy.

The Value of Primaries

By Anthony Vitarelli

This year’s Connecticut Democratic Senatorial primary offers a compelling case study as to the value of intraparty primaries and how national players view their role. Incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman has faced a strong challenge from anti-war activist Ned Lamont–stemming from the Senator’s vote to authorize the President’s use of force in Iraq. At the time of this writing, the primary outlook does not look bright for the former Vice Presidential candidate.

A Lamont victory would create a situation for national Democrats that will be at least uncomfortable and likely excruciating. Lieberman declared in early July that he will begin gathering signatures to place his name on the statewide ballot as an independent if Lamont bests him in the Aug. 8 primary.

Lieberman has sought to line up support from national Democrats in advance of the primary, particularly aiming to secure commitment of support even if he does not win the party line. While Lieberman has been successful in obtaining a few such endorsements (notably from fellow Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd), Senator Chuck Schumer of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee issued a stunning statement on June 14, asserting that he “fully supports [Lieberman] and he refused to rule out continuing that support if Lieberman were to run as an independent.”

If the DSCC supports Lieberman as an independent, Schumer will have effectively devalued the economies of scale gained by having a national party. When money flows into the DSCC from the Democratic fundraising base, donors likely assume that their funds will be directed to candidates running under the banner of the Democratic Party. National Democratic support against a Democratic candidate would strike a devastating blow to party unity and would certainly ruffled some feathers within the donor community.

Primaries are intended to winnow the field such that voters who identify with the general values of the Democratic Party (whatever those may be at the moment) can collectively support one candidate in the general election. Since they would prefer any Democrat over a Republican (the theory goes), Democratic primary voters will support the eventual party nominee.

All that being said, Schumer’s position has some merit. He genuinely believes that Lieberman has the greatest chance of winning the general election. Lieberman is a moderate incumbent and has access to a broad, national fund-raising base. Additionally, if the DSCC’s greatest goal is a Senate majority, Schumer’s position does not run counter to that mission. Defending his support of Lieberman, Schumer remarked, “you can run as an independent [or] you can run as an independent Democrat who pledges to vote for Harry Reid as Majority Leader.” This theory would similarly have national Democratic money flowing into the pocket of independent Senator James Jeffords.

Despite that caveat, the DSCC is essentially promising to ignore the results of a primary, in which the registered Democrats of Connecticut will collective decide who they wish to represent them in the fall. Others within the Democratic Party, such as Hillary Clinton, have pledged to support the winner of the primary. In discussing her decision, Clinton stated, “The challenges before us in 2006 call for a strong, united party, in which we all support and work for the candidates who are selected in the Democratic process.” Even Al Gore (Lieberman’s former running mate) said he would not get involved.

In polling released on July 20, Lamont holds a lead over Lieberman of 51 percent to 47 percent among Democratic primary voters. However, the same poll shows that if Lieberman runs as an independent in the general election, he will receive a whopping 51 percent of the entire state, compared to Lamont’s 27 percent and Republican Alan Schlesinger’s 9 percent. With Lieberman’s pledge to continue running as an independent regardless of the primary, the stage is set for a perfect storm scenario in which the entire primary process becomes hijacked by general election strategy. Although retaking the Senate must remain the crucial goal, don’t primaries mean anything any more?

Bush Drops the I-bomb

By Rob Goodman

As if to make the prospect of continued war in the Middle East more psychologically manageable, and because we have the luxury to do so, we decided that Monday’s top headline was not going to be the continued rocket attacks into northern Israel, or the aerial bombardment of Beirut, but rather that President Bush said a swear. During a photo opportunity at the G-8 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, an open microphone picked up the following exchange between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair:

Blair: See, if [Condoleezza Rice] goes out she’s got to succeed, as it were, whereas I can just go out and talk.

Bush: See, the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over.

While media attention centered on the scatological expletive, I myself don’t find it all that objectionable, and I’m not the only one. Hezbollah does need to stop this shit. I’m more concerned with Bush’s possible misuse of another potentially offensive word, and because politics stops at the water’s edge, and because I respect the office of the Presidency, I’d like to try to parse and rehabilitate Bush’s understanding of the concept of irony.

At first glance, there’s nothing ironic whatsoever about the situation Bush describes, which puts him in the embarrassing position of committing a rhetorical gaffe in conversation with a partner who can correctly use the expression “as it were” in a British accent. But before we condemn, let’s investigate.

Dating back to Aristotle, rhetoric has traditionally recognized three forms of irony, all of which “revolve around the notion of incongruity, or a gap between our understanding and what actually happens.” The three forms may awaken some memories of high school English, and since I’ve just spent a year teaching high school English, I thought I’d provide a refresher, with an eye toward the form of irony, if any, that best embraces Bush’s meaning.

Verbal irony: Verbal irony is an incongruity between what is said and what is meant, as in, “A seven-way war in the Middle East would be super-duper.” Sarcasm (literally, “flesh-tearing”) is a form of verbal irony intended to hurt or insult.

Since Bush’s response to Blair is characterizing action, not words, it’s hard to argue that he’s recognizing verbal irony. If pressed, I could make the case that Syria and Iran are making a belligerent “statement” on the world stage, and that Bush is using the metaphor of verbal irony to construe their actions as a form of speech, but that seems like a stretch.

Situational irony: Situational irony is an incongruity between expected results and actual results, as here.

This is more promising. It seems that the “they” in Bush’s remark signifies the United Nations, as Bush had earlier complained to Blair: “What about [Secretary-General] Kofi Annan? I don’t like the sequence of it. His attitude is basically cease-fire and everything else happens.” In other words, Bush is criticizing Annan for the rather predictable fault of expecting a UN-brokered cease-fire to solve everything without addressing the underlying issues. On the other hand, in Bush’s view, “The irony is that what they need to do is get Syria….”

So Annan is wasting his efforts, “crying ‘Peace! Peace!’ when there is no peace,” working for a general halt to the fighting when he ought to be targeting the conflict’s instigator. In this reading, the ironic incongruity is between Annan’s multilateralist perception of the situation and Bush’s realist reality. This is ironic because Annan, as diplomat-in-chief, really ought to know better.

This reading strikes me as entirely plausible and as a sufficient apologia against Bush’s critics. But let’s move on to the third form, to see whether Bush is operating simultaneously on two levels.

Dramatic irony: Dramatic, or tragic, irony is traditionally a theatrical form and concerns an incongruity between the knowledge of the characters and the knowledge of the audience. Of course, the classic example is Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, in which Oedipus searches for his father’s murderer, whom, as we all know, is Oedipus himself.

This category is the most difficult to assess, because it hinges on what Bush and Blair may or may not know. I have no knowledge that could make the necessity of Syria getting Hezbollah to stop doing this shit dramatically ironic, but then the leaders of the world see much that is hidden. Is it ironic that Syria needs to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit because Hezbollah is in secret negotiations with Israel? Is it ironic that Syria needs to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit because Iran is about to test a nuclear device? Is it ironic that Syria needs to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit because the leaders of the G-8 secretly know that Ehud Olmert and Hassan Nasrallah are long-lost identical twins separated at birth in a shipwreck?

At least, we know this: If Bush is smart enough to simultaneously use situational and dramatic irony in impromptu conversation, he damn sure is smart enough to know that microphone was on. It could be that he’s taking steps to prepare us for a revelation in the coming days that would be too momentous to digest in one sitting.

I feel, then, that Bush is on quite solid ground in his characterization of this shit-producing situation as ironic. Whatever form of irony we deem most likely, we have seen that they all have in common a sense of the incongruous, the absurd or the hole in our understanding. As H.W. Fowler puts it in Modern English Usage:

Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear and shall not understand, and another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware, both of that “more” and of the outsider’s incomprehension.

With this in mind, Bush’s I-bomb was eminently on target. Who of us hasn’t seen the chaos of the last weeks and felt that we were missing part of the script, that we have heard and heard and not understood, that the key that explains all of this is lost, or damaged, or untranslatable? Bush’s triumph here is to postulate that necessary second audience, that awareness keeping us from the brink by retaining its power to appreciate absurdity, that knowing spectatorship imposing order simply by the act of its wise, concentrated, ironic perception. I hope that, in the weeks ahead, we can share his faith.

Footnote: I should add that some textbooks recognize a fourth form of irony, Socratic irony, in which “someone pretends to be foolish or ignorant, but is not”; I would have considered this form in the above discussion but find myself unable to credit President Bush with a six-year endurance record.

We'll Get By

By Andrew Collins

Seventy percent of Americans—basically everyone except your grandfather, the Deep South, and Pat Robertson—are presently engaged in a collective “yikes.” President Bush has really done it now.

Back in 2000, we thought it didn’t matter who we elected. Bush, Gore, Gush, Bore. Didn’t see 9/11 and a War on Terror looming behind the corner of the millennium. Didn’t exactly realize “machine politician” implied a powerful, ideologically driven, corrupt, callous, and unbelievably ham-handed political machine behind the smirk. Frankly, we thought George W. Bush was relatable, had a few good ideas for schools, and wouldn’t haul off and do anything embarrassing.

Now just look. North Korea is testing intercontinental missiles. Iran is calling for the end of Israel and amping up the nuclear arsenal. Israel is shellacking Lebanon. Iraq is costing billions of dollars and thousands of American lives, and still seems headed for civil war. The environment is going down a disastrous track with President Bush having mischievously sabotaged the brakes; the trade and budget deficits are behaving like 1990s dot-com stocks; Social Security is still not fixed; it cost me $55 to fill up a Pontiac the other day; New Orleans is in shambles; the government is illegally spying on us; White House corruption allegations are still outstanding; and the massive tax cut for the wealthiest 1 percent still exists!

It’s enough to make a person howl at the moon. Even my mother—a paragon of blissful political apathy if there ever were one—is taking about how bad things have gotten.

But as bleak as the scene is outside, we will get through the storm. In addition to timeless qualities like the resilience of our people, the strength of our faith, and the fertility of our land, there are several realities specific to this moment in history that will help us carry through to a better day.

1) The 2008 Presidential candidates are pretty sharp. The frontrunners to be the next President are John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Mark Warner, George Allen, Mitt Romney, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, and Al Gore, in no particular order. All but Allen and Edwards are pretty moderate, and all but Allen have the potential to be quality Presidents. Even “Old Confederate” would be a step up from George W. Bush.

2) Global warming is nearing a different sort of tipping point. In his new film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore warns that global warming may accelerate to the point that it is not easily reversible. True enough. But the debate itself is also nearing a “tipping point”: the publicity generated by Gore’s movie and brave scientists are on the verge of making global warming a huge, mainstream issue, much like immigration was in the spring. That can only bode well for forcing government and businesses to make meaningful changes.

3) Democracy is on the march. Give President Bush credit for taking up the mantle of morality in US foreign policy that had been previously advanced by Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman. Afghanistan is a republic, not an Islamist theocracy. Syria is out of Lebanon. Even Iraq is free, albeit troubled, and thank God Saddam is gone. One radical reversal of longtime policy that was actually wise was the administration’s choice of messy democracy over stable autocracy in several key locations. It is a liberal’s dream—and yet few, if any, appear pleased about this spread of freedom. Did we think it was going to be seamless?

4) Private philanthropy has entered a new dimension. We are in a neo-Gilded Age, where our laws, institutions, and tax code enable a few individuals to amass extreme wealth and leave ever-increasing numbers of people impoverished. However, we have lucked out with the epic generosity of this age’s financial aristocracy. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and entertainment stars like Angelina Jolie and Bono have given billions to public health, nutrition, and other causes throughout the world. Ordinary Americans have stepped up their philanthropy in recent years, too, becoming the most generous in the world in helping the far-off (Islamic) victims of 2005’s Southeast Asian tsunami and Kashmiri earthquake. In the face of our government’s ineptitude, our people are guiding us back on track. It is inspiring. And it’s how it has always been.

5) Other countries are learning that we do not cause all their problems. In recent years, due to our overweening power, the United States has become the too-easy scapegoat for other countries’ ills. The characterization was always unfair, but now, with our international engagement and cache at an ebb, the hard truth is starting to sink in. People facing strife around the world are learning that destroying and defaming the United States is a false remedy for their societies’ blighted condition. This realization—a textbook silver lining on a dark cloud—will gradually help defuse the simmering hatred that leads to terrorism.

6) We are all the wiser. Six years of President Bush have been immensely difficult, but as with all mistakes, this experience has been beneficial in that we can draw invaluable lessons:

• Media and voters must watch the candidate’s advisors and allies closely, particularly if he or she is a “machine politician.” The man in the Oval Office isn't the only one getting elected.
• Beware of applying ideology blindly—yes, even the ideology of freedom. Everything occurs in a context, and ignoring extant realities is a recipe for failure.
• Cronyism and corruption don’t pay, politically. The Michael Brown and Harriet Miers fiascos hopefully showed a generation of politicians that appointing your buddy to an important post, more often than not, just isn’t worth it.
• Never underestimate the American people. President Bush, riding high after Afghanistan and his reelection, both doubted the willingness of the American people to sacrifice for righteous causes and assumed he was secure in his popularity. We would have given much to help had President Bush called, but we were not prepared to lay down and let him mislead the country.

The American people are more generous and wise than President Bush ever appreciated. That is the biggest single reason why we will get through this, with flying colors, as we always have and will again.

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR: The Duke Lacrosse Tragedy

By Jay Ganatra

I have truly never seen anything like it.

For about eight weeks running from mid-March to mid-May, I could not pick up a newspaper, watch cable news, or peruse the Internet without reading about the latest developments in Durham. My casual conversations quickly were redirected with questions concerning “lacrosse culture,” the motivations of Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, or how the university had handled the allegations to date.

And, now, there’s nothing.

Back then, we only knew a few things for sure. On Mar. 13, the lacrosse team had had a team party at 610 Buchanan Street involving underage drinking and had invited two exotic dancers. After a disagreement of some kind, a racial epithet had been heard used by a player and the dancers left the party. The next morning one of the dancers reported to the police that she had been raped.

In response to the party--not the allegations of sexual assault--President Brodhead and Athletic Director Joe Alleva forfeited the subsequent two games of the regular season. At this time, the members of the Duke lacrosse team volunteered their DNA samples to the Durham police and released a statement in which they asserted “unequivocally that any allegation that a sexual assault or rape occurred is totally and transparently false.”

Concurrently, the university began an introspective process of determining how the university may or may not have been responsible for the conditions under which such an allegation would appear to be credible. At a Mar. 28 press conference, President Brodhead said, “Universities show their mettle by the way they respond to difficult circumstances, not by their absolute ability to prevent such circumstances from ever happening.” Accordingly, he charged five committees composed of university and non-university stakeholders to examine the following topics:

• The culture of the lacrosse team
• Duke administration’s response
• Duke’s student judicial process
• The ways Duke educates students in the values of personal responsibility
• An overall review by people from the Durham community, national higher education circles and Duke, that will scrutinize Duke’s responses to the lacrosse team incident

The groups completed their reviews exhaustively and critically, and the national press covered their release quite positively.

The intervening weeks brought the resignation of lacrosse coach Mike Pressler and the formal indictments by a Durham grand jury of three members of the team, Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann, and David Evans. At a press conference following his indictment, Evans stoically stated, “You have all been told some fantastic lies.”

It appears that some of these fantastic lies may now have been brought to light.

Kim Roberts, the second dancers from the Mar. 13 parties has claimed that the assertions of her co-dancer are “a crock” and that they were never separated for longer than five minutes during the party. The indicted players have offered potentially exculpatory evidence to Nifong, including ATM receipts from locations away from the house and testimony from a cab driver who verifies that at least one of the players was not present during the time of the alleged assault.

Perhaps most importantly, there has yet to be a DNA match from the accused to any of the 46 members of the team who offered samples, despite Mike Nifong’s claims of the woman having been raped orally, vaginally, and anally. Additionally, the accuser’s claims of the evening’s events have changed drastically since March--altering the number of her assailants from 20 to three, among other disparities. Finally, the lineup that produced the three indictments may not even be admissible in court, as the lineups were composed solely of Duke lacrosse players, rather than the standard practice of including many similar looking potential suspects. To be clear, it seems that if she had selected randomly from the lineup, three lacrosse players would still have been indicted.

A number of great tragedies will have been precipitated from this event if the accuser’s charges are ultimately found to be groundless.

First and foremost, the three accused students will have had their reputations tarnished for the rest of their lives. Finnerty and Seligmann have missed a semester of school and have been placed on suspension. Evans, a 2005 graduate, had a job offer withdrawn following his indictment. Their lives will never be the same, after having their faces on the cover of Newsweek and their houses staked out by news teams. Regrettably, they always will be, “the Duke lax guys that got accused of raping a stripper.”

Second, whenever an alleged sexual assault is proved unfounded, future allegations of sexual assault receive less credibility. If this comes to pass, a deep, meaningful harm will have been committed to future victims of sexual assault who make the difficult decision to come forward and confront their assailant.

Third, Mike Nifong’s abuse of the Durham County electoral process has been a sad commentary on personal ambition. Following the initial wave of allegations, Nifong gave over 70 national interviews on television and radio, while gearing up for his difficult reelection campaign. Coincidently, the first two indictments were unsealed about two weeks before Election Day. His behavior has been nothing short of shameful, and I hope that someone at the North Carolina Bar Association has the courage to investigate it further.

Fourth, the media, particularly cable news anchors such as Nancy Grace, have acted with a nearly undeniable presumption of guilt even while facts remained unclear. If the media intends to cover events with such great prominence during the early stages of such an investigation, they have a responsibility to give a similar degree of visibility to “less sexy” but unequivocal facts as they become certain. Placing allegations on page one, denials on page six, and exculpatory evidence on page four strikes me as a bizarre method of reporting the news.

In his recent New York Times column, David Brooks wrote, “Witch hunts go in stages. First frenzy, when everybody damns the souls of people they don't know. Then confusion, as the first wave of contradictory facts comes in. Then deafening silence, as everybody studiously ignores the vicious slanders they uttered during the moment of maximum hysteria.” In this regard, perhaps deafening silence is best though. If the judicial system ultimately clears these young men, I do not anticipate their receiving an apology from Mike Nifong. Wouldn’t you just want your life back?

Jay Ganatra is a senior at Duke University.

Ann Coulter's 320-Page Apology

By Rob Goodman

I hope you’ll excuse me for waiting this long to write on Ann Coulter’s most recent book. I think it deserved a careful reading and some detailed thought; I also think that for quite a while I resisted the conclusions I was forming, because they were so far out of line with the conclusions of other commentators whose work I respect. But I believe that my conclusions offer the most thorough summation of what is, at times, a very difficult work. Let me try to explain them.

Briefly, Coulter’s new book, Godless, advances the thesis that political liberalism is, in itself, an organized religion. The “Church of Liberalism” has, according to Coulter, “its sacraments (abortion), its holy writ (Roe v. Wade), its martyrs (from Soviet spy Alger Hiss to cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal), its clergy (public school teachers), its churches (government schools, where prayer is prohibited but condoms are free), its doctrine of infallibility (as manifest in the ‘absolute moral authority’ of spokesmen from Cindy Sheehan to Max Cleland), and its cosmology (in which mankind is an inconsequential accident).”

Putting aside the pejorative language—the necessity of which I justify below—it’s clear that Coulter is being quite literal. Liberalism is Godless because, in her estimation, it rejects the Judeo-Christian deity, but it has every other hallmark of a real church, which is, after all, a system of organized and regulated belief. She herself writes that “the absence of a divinity makes liberals’ belief system no less religious…. Shintoism [sic] and Buddhism have no Creator God either, and they are considered religions.”

In this, Coulter seems to me to be following William James, who determined in The Varieties of Religious Experience that “religion…shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine” (emphasis added). Therefore, the object of the religious attitude is irrelevant to the systematic study of religion; I might very well find no objective evidence for what you claim to be worshiping, but if I observe the feelings, acts, and experiences of the Jamesian faith-state, I cannot deny that you are practicing religion. A conservative might deny the object of the Church of Liberalism—he might hate abortion, and Darwin, and public school teachers—but he cannot deny that liberals are practicing a religion, by the only definition of “religion” that works objectively. That seems to be Coulter’s argument; and so her references to “sacraments,” “holy writ,” “clergy,” “cosmology,” and so on, are not meant to be taken ironically—they are, as I said, very literal.

Why is this significant? Well, religion has a special place in our public discourse. That place is a protected place. I can ruthlessly criticize your politics, your economics, your parenting style, even your sexual orientation, and there will still be room for me in the general debate. But I can never question your theology. If I ever, in a political context, made you defend the doctrine of the Trinity, or Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist, or the literal truth of Mohammed’s revelation, I would be shouted down and not invited back. Those are the rules of the game, and Coulter’s right-wing allies take them for granted when they denounce “anti-Christian prejudice.”

If you don’t believe me, try this thought experiment. Imagine that instead of this column, you’re reading another one I’ve written, entitled “The Mormons.” In it, I argue that Mormons are habitual liars, traitorously un-American, and, in general, not very pleasant company. What would you do when you hit the Comment button? What’s the word for someone who could write such a thing?

The word is bigot. Not because I accused someone of lying, or treason, or poor conversational etiquette—but because I did it on a religious basis.

And now comes Coulter urging us to give liberalism religious recognition. While recognition stops short of agreement—just as I can disagree with my Hindu friends but refrain from mocking their beliefs—Coulter is arguing that the religion of liberalism deserves special treatment. In effect, she wants us to enlarge the protective space and place liberalism under the aegis. And once we call liberalism a religion, we put it beyond criticism. Anti-liberalism goes on a par with anti-Semitism. Liberal-bashing becomes bigotry.

So what do we do with the fact that Coulter is now making this plea for tolerance, where before she had labeled liberals traitors and all but argued for their exile? I think there’s only one way to reconcile this new book with her entire previous oeuvre.

That is: Godless is a book of career-repudiating magnitude. In one blast, Coulter is retracting all her liberal-hating zeal, all her harshest words, and at the same time courageously castigating the right wing’s anti-liberal bigotry. Yes, Coulter did a great deal to foster that bigotry. But now, she’s decided to make amends. Godless is the apology, all 320 pages of it.

True, Coulter has couched that apology in a book that accuses liberals of “worshiping sex and death,” halting industrial progress in the name of “weeds and vermin,” defending pedophiles, and “believing that the following sentence makes sense: President Clinton saved the Constitution by repeatedly ejaculating on a fat Jewish girl in the Oval Office.” True, Coulter has promoted the book in which her apology is couched by accusing 9/11 widows of enjoying their husbands’ deaths. But Coulter didn’t create this political climate, and neither did you or I; and still you and I and Ann Coulter have to live in it. The fact is that, in 2006, a heartfelt apology demands to be spoken in words of utmost vituperation. Coulter has grasped that fact, and she’s done the best she can.

Would you like some fries with that pathos?

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR: My Parents Ate My Homework

By Jimmy Soni

I recall a vivid memory from my family trip to India in the fourth grade: my cousins leaning forward to support the weight of their backpacks. These bags were cavernous, and put to shame my rinky-dinky, single-pocket pack. Each day, my cousins would fill them to the breakpoint with their textbooks, which were equally weighty. Another image I’ll never forget: I opened my second-grade cousin’s math book, only to find that he was at least a level ahead of me.

My cousins were incredibly hard workers, but they were not the exception to the rule. India has a storied tradition of challenging its youngsters in the classroom, especially in math and science, where their diligence is legendary. Summer lasts a little over a month in my parents’ motherland, and high-stakes testing enables a largely meritocratic system of higher education.

America could stand to in-source some of this vigor. Two weeks ago, on the editorial page of The New York Times, Sarah Bennet and Nancy Kannish, authors of The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It, argued that schools are unfairly and unwisely burdening students with summer homework. Relying on research from Duke University’s Harris Cooper, they claimed that the connection between homework and achievement is tenuous, that homework prevents the “consolidation” of newly learned information, and that homework steals time away from reading for pleasure.

Their piece is long on angst, but short on analysis. Pulling isolated examples from school districts around the country, Bennet and Kannish practically accuse school districts of robbing students of their childhood. But here’s an example of one of the so-called grueling assignments: “Fifth and sixth graders in a Golden, Col., public middle school are required to keep a journal on a different math topic each week this summer, read three books and complete a written and artistic report on two of them.” Three books… for three months of summer. Here’s another: “One ninth grader we know was assigned a packet of materials on the Holocaust.” Twelve weeks with no obligations; obviously a “packet of materials” is just too much to ask.

Bennet and Kannish advise parents to petition their school boards about this “vacation homework” and, if that doesn’t work, to allow their children to ignore it. This is justified, they argue, since teachers are not well-schooled on the “science of homework.” But Bennet and Kannish are themselves not up-to-date on the science; they selectively ignore Cooper’s other research, which concludes that summer vacation actually strips away close to three months of learning from the school year. Over three years of school, your child will lose nearly a grade-level’s worth of material. By the time they finish high school, they have lost four years worth. According to the Center for Summer Learning, the summer brain drain is felt most acutely in math and hits lower and middle-income communities especially hard.

The solution, according to Bennet and Kannish, is for parents to set aside time for reading and other intellectual activities. Read: Homework, assigned by parents. The trouble is that even the most committed parents will have a tough time determining grade-level appropriate material, particularly in math. And without the specter of grades, parents will bear the burden of tracking progress and tacking punishments onto incomplete assignments.

Summer learning loss is a serious issue for policymakers and parents alike. Local school board officials must recognize that students are effectively stuck in reverse during the summer. They ought to assign appropriate, engaging work, and then stand tough when parents complain. The first step for parents is to ignore Bennet and Kannish, embrace their children’s summer work, and encourage them to use their summer freedom to both finish their homework and complete other constructive projects.

The question of summer learning has implications for the country as a whole. My cousins with their advanced textbooks, larger backpacks, and month-long summers are now snatching up jobs that once belonged to Americans, in part because of their math and science prowess. Many have moved to Bangalore, a boom town that plays host to the world’s top technology firms (think Silicon Valley only with more dust and enormous construction). The Bennet and Kannish types pose a threat not only to families, but to our country’s competitive advantage—it’s high time we tune them out, turn the television off, and toss out our inferior backpacks.

Jimmy Soni is a senior at Duke University.

Holiday Notice

The 18-to-24 Bracket wishes its readers a happy Independence Day. Columns will return next week.