Discovery Blog

Discovery Institute is pleased to announce our third annual summer lecture series for interns and young professionals. The 'Gorton Summer Lecture Series' named for our distinguished board member and former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton, introduces young people to the nature and ideals of public service. The series also examines current political issues and their potential impact, and is part of Discovery's ongoing McNaughton Fellows Lecture Series. We are pleased to be joined this year by the Washington Policy Center as a co-sponsor. Events in the series are presented interview-style, or as a lecture on a topic of the speaker's choosing.

June 26, 2007
The Meaning and Ideals of Public Service
Featuring Former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton
Video available here.

July 19, 2007
Talk Radio & Politics
Featuring Talk Show Host Kirby Wilbur
More info here.
August 3, 2007
Poli-Sci and the Liberal Professorate
Featuring Dr. Mathew Manweller
More info here.

August 7, 2007
Law and Public Policy
Featuring Attorney General Rob McKenna
More info here.

Our Senior Fellow George Gilder and I were in Israel recently so that he could meet with high tech entrepreneurs--led by the tech investor, executive Jonathan Medved--and also to meet with academics interested in the intersection of technology and intelligent design.

Israel's dynamic technology scene--it rivals our own and surpasses all others in inventiveness and sheer business panache--should be the subject of another blog. But here I would like to call your attention to the excellent article published by the Jerusalem Post after our visit. Ruthie Blum conducted an adroit interview that managed to provide comprehensive context and yet allowed George to speak for himself and in his own voice. It was refreshing to have a reporter who was so self-confident that she didn't feel obliged to interpret his words for him. It should be a common strength in a reporter, but it actually is rare.

In a couple of places, as an interview subject will do, George fails to provide connective tissue between two thoughts; i.e., when he discusses "multiple universe" theory, he seems by implication to criticize Richard Feinman, when he means only Richard Feinman's less able followers (I checked to be sure).

And Ms. Blum terms Gilder a "scientist," which, of course, he is not and doesn't pretend to be.

What George does do is integrate the world of computer technology with the debate over intelligent design.

It bothers me to think that young atheists would be harassed by anyone, especially Christians. If that is why they need to go to "Atheist Camp" in the summer, it is a sad commentary.

Also, if young atheists don't want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, that is fine, too. I do wonder at people like a scientist at the Smithsonian who emailed a colleague that his son says "One nation under dog," instead of "under God." Can't he just leave it out, or leave the whole thing out?

So, if you know any young person who is intolerant of someone who is an atheist, help him or her to reconsider their attitude.

Of course, our experience is that young atheists are not intolerant of people of faith. But old atheists certainly are.

Wouldn’t you think an atrocity in which little children’s heads were cut off by al Qaeda would merit coverage by American news media? Especially if the reporters had been told about it? Especially if a different atrocity that was supposed to show sectarian conflict was reported, only to be proved a fabrication?

A public investigation surely seems warranted. At some point the American people have to ask more probing questions about the quality of news they are getting and what the sources are that the US media are employing—figuratively and literally. And if the news executives back in the States have integrity they will want to fire people who are not doing their jobs properly.

The Financial Times is the latest source of information that Iran may be assisting al Qaeda in Iraq. In this case it is by turning a blind eye to al Qaeda activities on Iranian soil and--despite their sectarian antagonism--are giving the Sunni terrorists a safe haven before they return to Iraq.

I am going to start something of a drumbeat about the Iraq War now, pointing out the myriad ways it is inextricably part of the world war on terror. Al Qaeda operatives certainly understand the reality and, beleaguered though they are in Iraq, count on American fickleness and impatience to help them snatch a victory out of the jaws of defeat. The media and the Democrats in Congress--and now some Republicans--seem determined to assist them.

The lead news lately is that support for the war effort is waning in the U.S., while buried in the news are reports that the Surge is working in Iraq.

The grim fact we have to face is that we are up against both Iraq and Iran (and Iran's surrogates). The President has known this from the start, but the media and a large share of the public are still in denial. They think if we just bring home the troops, or tuck them away somewhere on the border of the fighting, the terrorist challenge to us will dissipate.

Somehow.

Eventually someone gets around to deflating the scare stories about assorted dangers facing mankind. Usually it also is not widely picked up. When the danger of "global cooling" ended in the 80s, it hardly made a difference, because we were already preparing for the opposite scare, global warming.

Now we have it from Time magazine (July 9, 2007, "Increasing Oil Reserves") that the great oil shortage facing the Earth is not really so bad after all:

"An annual British Petroleum report claims that the world has enough oil reserves to last 40 more years. The study, based on officially submitted figures, shows 15 percent more proven oil reserves globally than a decade ago. In fact, only North America has less known oil now than it had 20 years ago. Governments often rely on the BP reports, but many scientists question whether the world really has that long to go before its fuel gauge hits empty."

Of course, some of us who follow this story a bit realize that "known" oil reserves are only those that are ready for exploration. If they have not yet been identified, obviously, they can't be estimated. As a result, we always have only a certain number of years of known oil reserves, but like the horizon, the danger of oil supply exhaustion is constantly receding as one approaches it.

I had the great pleasure of knowing the late economist Julian Simon who was a wise and yet trenchant critic of environmental alarmism. I wish he were still alive; we need him. Great attention and awards were lavished on his rival, Paul Ehrlich, who predicted world starvation and the depletion of key resources by 1980. Simon placed a bet on that with Ehrlich and, of course, was completely vindicated. But that didn't stop the media from lionizing Ehrlich and ignoring Simon. Big foundation money followed the same path.

If Simon were alive, he would have a hard time getting a fair hearing in the mainstream media even now. They have already decided who is right and wrong on these matters and that the side with which they disagree (along with Mainstream Science) shall not even be heard.

But facts, as is said, are stubborn things. The truth has a way of leaking out.

Last month I was in Turkey and learned how seriously the Turks regard the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) terrorist threat in that country's Kurdish region. Attacks on Turks by the PKK--and suspicions that they are coming from the adjacent Kurdish region of Northern Iraq--are major news stories in Turkey, while they are only beginning to be noticed in the United States. The PKK insurgents may or may not be allied with al Qaeda, but they definitely are ruthless terrorists. They also are NOT supported by the political groups that currently predominate in Kurdish sections of Iraq, according to Iraqi officials. But some Turks suspect otherwise, and , in any event, have every reason to be alarmed about the terrorism to which their country has been subjected.

Periodically the Turkish military expresses a desire to pursue the PKK into Iraq. War exercises are held near the border and it would not be hard at all to see an incursion take place. A number of Americans--from Secretary of State Rice to former Secretary of State Kissinger--have urged restraint on Turkey, but tensions remain high.

A new story has some Kurds announcing that the Turks have massed 140,000 troops on the Iraq border. (See e.g. this ABCNews.com story.) The U.S. seems to regard that as propaganda. Nonetheless, no one should treat the danger lightly. Ilan Berman, vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council, has a useful idea for using technology to intercept PKK terrorists on the Turkish/Iraqi border, and he suggests that we make it available to the Turks as a way to show our commitment to help them in all reasonable ways. (See "Kurdistan Showdown" in today's Wall Street Journal.)

The current government of Turkey, though nominally "Islamic", actually is the more pro-Western of the two major political parties and the least interested in invading Iraq. The Turkish military, however, is aligned with more secularist groups and more open to the idea of a war to crush the PKK, even though such a conflict likely would pull into it the Kurds who presently are not supportive of the PKK. It also would do terrible damage to Iraq as a whole.

The fact that the pro-secularism Turkish military presently is restrained by the nominally Islamic elected government will seem counter-intuitive to many Western observers, though most in close contact with Turkey have recognized the reality. The "religious" element in the Turkish parliament actually, on balance, is relatively more favorable toward tolerance for Christians and other religious minorities. (See my blog on that subject here.) It seems likely that elections in coming months will only confirm the present political arrangement in Turkey.

However, if Democrats, and media and some Republicans have their way and the United States decides to pull out of Iraq after September, the already pronounced likelihood of a substantial rise in regional conflict will be increased in the semi-independent section of Iraq that, with some notable exceptions, has been the safest part of the country. In other words, you may expect to see the Iraq war go international, with our allies the Kurds, thrust into a war with our allies, the Turks. It is hard to imagine worse folly.

Please ask your local "peace" activist who favors American withdrawal from Iraq this year what he or she will advocate when our allies in the Middle East wind up fighting each other--and each demands our help.

Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman has a column in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer on the Fairness Doctrine:

Read it below the fold!

My article on the so-called Fairness Doctrine ran today in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. It is a credit to the P.I., and also the Seattle Times, that they accept op-eds from conservatives. Many papers effectively do not. Or they accept those that fit their own ideology (a conservative writing an article denouncing the war in Iraq, for example) or are irrelevant to the biting controversies of the time. My favorite was a Bill Buckley piece on the joys of sailing that the New York Times ran a few years ago. A Buckley piece skewering a favorite Times sacred cow; that would be a different matter.

When I have run articles in the past that stirred controversy, a number of the letters to the editor were based on personal attack: Why do you allow such a person (with such a view) to be published in your paper? But I don't take it personally. Increasingly, censorship is the liberal grass roots (and "net-roots") response to conservative analysis and critique. In other words, liberal editors will get in trouble with readers for running conservative articles and never will get in trouble for failing to run them.

The problem is particularly acute now on issues that touch on science and technology. The media are overwhelmingly populated by liberals, of course, but in the past that meant that they agreed with the old-liberal idea of a marketplace of ideas. The attacks on conservatives by the kind of people that populate the left today always start by saying that, of course they support free speech, academic freedom, etc. (Oh, but, of course!) "HOWEVER," there must be an exception in the case of.....fill in the blank with whatever issue is under debate. In science, the trope is that that "science has spoken" on some hot topic (Darwinian evolution, embryonic stem cell research, assisted suicide, the extent of man's role in global warming, etc.) and therefore contrary views should receive no more attention than one would give (and this is always the example), say, Holocaust denial.

You wouldn't want to be equated with Holocaust denial, would you? Good, so don't publish an article that splits from the liberal herd on embryonic stem cells, or whatever. This is pure demagogy, but it apparently goes down easily at editorial departments where the editors already agree with the the policy perspective of the complainant.

That is why the Washington Post--that has sensible things to say about the war in Iraq, for example--will not publish an article defending intelligent design or criticizing Darwinian evolution, even though the subject has attracted huge audiences nationally and has even come up in presidential debates. The Atlanta Constitution won't run any anti-Darwin op-ed, even "balanced" with a pro-Darwin article, as a matter of policy.

But it is not just science-related issues. For supporters of the war in Iraq, the window of response is slowly closing. Even some conservative columnists feel the squeeze. Their pro-Iraq articles somehow don't get published in as many of their syndicated papers as others do, so why keep writing them? Academic freedom articles are newsworthy only when the assailed professor holds views with which the editors are sympathetic, regardless of topic.

Which brings me back to my article on the Fairness Doctrine in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Yes, talk radio has some real goons in it; some are embarrassing, regardless of your point of view. And yes, talk radio doesn't lend itself easily to discursive analysis. Speak over 30 seconds on a talk show and the "Snooze" button sounds and the host interrupts. You can understand why, because talk radio is designed to be part entertainment and all action. It was, after all, a means to get away from the old format of "talking heads" that typically induced terrible ratings. Small audience, low ratings, few advertisers, no program. That's the way it is, and that probably is the way it should be. Within that understanding, commercial talk radio and tv have been a huge boon to public participation in "public" debate. That is probably why liberal public radio has tried to imitate it.

To be clear, for someone like me who loves newspapers and magazines, even when I hate them, talk radio (even when I love it!) is not a sufficient substitute for long interesting articles in major dailies and weeklies.

But it is "A" substitute ,and some of its practitioners are gutsy when other media, including supposedly conservative newspapers and magazines, are cowardly. And it gets results. It is needed. It is one of the few major safety valves conservative opinion has left in America. The proposition that the left should not tolerate it appears to me to border on the totalitarian in motive (witting or not) and the cheapest politics in practice.

We Have Identified the Problem with the Environment—and it’s Your Existence!

I have to share the following from Second Hand Smoke blog of my colleague, Wesley J. Smith (see original post for images):

Here we go again. Newsweek reports--in surprisingly positive terms--on the movement to rid the earth of the vermin species--us:

Environmentalists have their own eschatology--a vision of a world not consumed by holy fire but returned to ecological balance by the removal of the most disruptive species in history. That, of course, would be us, the 6 billion furiously metabolizing and reproducing human beings polluting its surface. There's even a group trying to bring it about, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, whose Web site calls on people to stop having children altogether...And "four out of five" of the people he's told about it, he estimates, thought the idea sounded wonderful. Since we're headed inexorably toward an environmental crash anyway, why not get it over cleanly and allow the world to heal?

Over time, though, Weisman's attitude toward the rest of humanity softened, as he thought of some of the beautiful things human beings have accomplished, their architecture and poetry, and he eventually arrived at what he views as a compromise position: a worldwide, voluntary agreement to limit each human couple to one child. This, says Weisman--who is 60, and childless after the death of his only daughter--would stabilize the human population by the end of the century at about 1.6 billion, approximately where it was in 1900. And then, perhaps, more of the world could resemble Varosha, the beach resort in Cyprus in the no man's land between the Greek and Turkish zones, where, Weisman writes, thickets of hibiscus, oleander and passion lilac grow wild and houses disappear under magenta mounds of bougainvillea.

The anti-human movement--lets call it anti-humanism--is clearly gaining traction when an MSM outlet of the caliber of Newsweek reports positively about the "intriguing thought experiment" of doing away with all people. To me, respecting such notions--even if in a bemused manner--is a disturbing symptom of a view that evolves all too easily from the abandonment of human exceptionalism.

Besides, if all the people were gone and earth did return to an alleged paradise: What difference would it make? Only human beings give meaning to the beauty of nature. Only human beings appreciate the grandeur of fauna and flora. Only human beings have stepped sufficiently outside of nature to be able to look back at it as something apart. Indeed, were we to disappear, the remaining denizens of the meaningless planet would just go on and on, suffering through the brutal and desperate tooth and claw struggle for survival utterly indifferent to the awesome beauty that our elimination would bequeath.

The cheek of Deroy Murdock! He wants to expand rather than abolish the federal prison at Guantanamo, Cuba. To read his article, click here.

As is often the case, Murdock makes great contrarian case for his view. Most assuredly, the Administration should turn the tables on the constant critics and show why it is imperative to deal realistically with terrorists.

It is getting tiresome to find out that major successes in Iraq simply are ignored in the mainstream media. This time Max Boot, a defense analyst, author and former Wall Street Journal editor provides the useful source for news directly from the front. The way he gets it is to ask American personnel on the scene to tell him what is going on. What a concept! Quick, pick up the phone and call the Medill School of Journalism.

We do know from the MSM that once-tormented Anbar Province has become much less dangerous since the Surge and the decision of Sunni tribes to distance themselves from—and then, turn on—al Qaeda. Here, from Colonel John Charlton in Ramadi, via Max Boot’s Contentions blog at Commentary magazine’s site, is a report on a major al Qaeda attack that recently was thwarted, with most of the 50 attackers killed or captured.

I feel more optimistic now that the forces trying to prevent America from staying in the War in Iraq are finally beginning to lose credibility in the media. Maybe there are only a few sunny spots in a cloudy sky, but the interview that The New York Times’ Baghdad Bureau Chief John Burns gave to Charlie Rose the other night is being widely circulated and commented upon. (See video of the interview here.) In it, Burns makes clear—to Rose’s surprise—that he and others following events day by day in Iraq realize that the U.S. cannot just get up on leave, even in 120 days. This view of Burns’ is not new (see this earlier post of mine). But it is dawning on more people now that his stand is contrary to the perfervid position of the Times’ editorial page and almost all its columnists.

Then there were the statements of American generals on the scene saying that the Surge is working but definitely needs more time. And John McCain’s eloquent address on the Senate floor this week. Sen. McCain seems almost liberated by the decline of his electoral prospects in recent days to state all the more clearly—and without hint of politics—the true conditions in Iraq. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ all-night anti-war showboat ran aground, failing to attract either the popular interest or the Senate votes to keep it afloat.

These are all good signs. I recommend reading the Burns’ interview and then the McCain speech.

The sizable victory for the AKP in Turkey's elections Sunday (read the New York Times coverage here) is confirmation that the country will continue its distinctive
policies of economic liberalism and growth, a generally pro-U.S. and
pro-E.U. Foreign policy and resistance to the military's desire to launch an
attack on Kurdish rebels operating out of Iraq.

In foreign policy, none of the parties in Turkey is indifferent to the
terrorist attacks that Kurdish PKK rebels from Northern Iraq have made
against Turkish military and police. The question is how to repel them. A
rash invasion of Iraq would endanger relations with the U.S. and the E.U.
and would destroy the growing economic trade between Turkey and Iraq and
embroil Turkey in its own insurgency war. Of course, it also would be a
terrible development for the United States, forcing us to choose between our
allies the Turks and our allies, the Kurds. The PKK is a relatively minor
player in the Kurdish provinces of Iraq, and a rival of the main Kurdish
parties, but a Turkish attack on the region presumably would mobilize all
Kurds, not just the PKK.

The irony is that the supposedly Islamist party in Turkey, the AKP, is
the more cautious one about the border problems while the secularists are
the more bellicose.

If anyone wants a lesson in how politics in Muslim countries is not
always what it seems, Turkey therefore is an object lesson.

Consider the issue of "veiling" of women. Few Muslim women in that
country are in full veiling (which in some countries is called purdah, or a
chador or abayah), But most women, even professed secularists, dress more
conservatively than Westerners do. Putting on a scarf would seem to be no
big deal, especially since no one is proposing that it be required. However,
it really irritates the secularist elites. They contend that it will start a
slippery slope toward theocracy.

Yet--another irony--the AKP party that is now in government and is the
main political supporter of a tolerance policy on headscarves, actually has
been a leader in women's rights, abolishing the laws that gave men leniency
for wife abuse and for honor killings. The party also has had better
relations with Christians than do the secularists. The Armenian Orthodox
Patriarch all but endorsed the AKP ticket this year.

Westerners are largely unaware of how many unfortunate consequences
attended the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, including the
strange way that Iraq was partitioned. The Turk's abolition of the Caliphate
that -- located in Istanbul for centuries under the protection of the
Ottomans -- had the unintended consequence of depriving the Muslim world of
what normally was very moderate spiritual leadership. When it disappeared,
various kinds of free lance depravity were developed in certain former
Ottoman provinces. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, for example, engaged in a
tragic dalliance with the Nazis in World War II . And then there is the
current campaign of Osama bin Laden to re-establish his own form of
Caliphate--in Baghdad.

We need the Turks to help us in the Muslim world, especially in the
Middle East. We may have differences with the AKP from time to time, but we
generally benefit from their position and should be grateful for their
friendship.

Max Boot takes on former Secretary of State Kissinger for his comparison of the supposed diplomatic solution in Vietnam with a similar opportunity in Iraq and the Baker-Hamilton Commission recommendations for negotiations with Syria and Iran. (Read his Los Angeles times piece here.) Boot is absolutely right and the grisly truth about what really happened in Vietnam is worth repeating for those who have forgotten the chronology.

The idea that you can negotiate your way out of the Iraq conflict is worse than dubious. You succeed in Iraq—and anywhere in the Middle East--by winning militarily. Negotiation is what you do when you have lost.

In the the past couple of days I think I have detected a slight shift in public opinion as Americans have reacted adversely to Sen. Harry Reid’s all-night Senate teach-in on Iraq. It called attention to the underlying issues all right, and as such it backfired. Sen. McCain’s fine floor speech helped sharpen the contrast between Sen. Reid’s political posturing and a statesmanlike approach. The Tuesday NY Times reports a poll showing opinion moving back a bit toward support of our original invasion on Iraq.

What is most clear is that the war opponents don’t have a post-withdrawal plan. Saying that, yes, there may be a terrible genocide if we leave, but that we should leave anyhow (the Obama position) is just not persuasive. In fact, it is so breathtaking that it may be causing people to re-think. There is a difference between wanting to get out as soon as possible (even war supporters want to leave just as soon as a credible transfer to the the Iraqi government can be justified) and a willingness to risk the whole region slipping into chaos—and into our enemies’ hands.

I hope you noticed Mustafa Akyol’s excellent article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal. Note that the AKP even won a majority in Kurdish areas, outpolling the Kurdish nationalist parties.

People thinking about the future of Islam and its relations with the West should study the case of contemporary Turkey. What Mustafa Akyol of the Turkish Daily News describes as “liberal Islam” versus “illiberal secularism” is an insight that is pivotal. At least one obvious alternative is “anti-liberal Islamic extremism.” Secularism does little to combat the extremists, while “liberal Islam” offers a bridge between the Muslim world and the West.

Editor's Note: This piece is written by Keith Pennock, a member of the Discovery Institute staff.

Two underplayed news items today point to a disturbing trend by the Left to hamper the War on Terror. The first item, picked up in Australia’s “Age”, noted that “At least 30 former Guantanamo Bay detainees have been killed or recaptured on after taking up arms against allied forces following their release.”

Conventional wisdom on the Left is that Guantanamo is full of innocent men. Rep. Jim Moran’s letter to President Bush said as much. The “Age” story, sparked by the recent death of former Gitmo detainee and Al Qaeda commander Abdullah Mehsud in Pakistan would seem to belie that contention.

The second item worth noting is Review & Outlook from today’s Wall Street Journal, dealing with the strife between the President and the members of the Democratically controlled Congress regarding the use of warrant-less wire tapping and the FISA courts.

By way of background, the FISA courts, were set up as a part of the Foreign Intelligence Services Act of 1978 that segregated foreign surveillance under the aegis of the CIA from domestic surveillance under the aegis of the FBI. FISA severely limited the amount of intelligence that could be shared between these two branches and it also set up a system of judges that would approve or deny things like wire-tapping and the sharing of information. The act derived from the Sen. Frank Church hearings during the Watergate scandal, but it application went far beyond its original scope and hamstrung our intelligence capabilities.

If there is any one act singularly responsible for our intelligence services’ failure to “connect the dots” to 9/11 the FISA Act is it. Why? Because the act created an arbitrary and artificial division between foreign and domestic surveillance that terrorists are all too happy to exploit and that our lumbering legal system is not lithe enough to address. Under the current system, should a terrorist cross from foreign jurisdiction to American soil, the CIA must execute a handoff in surveillance to its domestic counterpart, the FBI. The problem is, such hand-offs in the past have resulted in the loss of suspects. A handoff can only be made if a FISA judge approves it, and such judges are rarely ready at the end of a phone when terrorists cross jurisdictions.

What’s more, the arbitrary nature of this division is making itself felt more acutely in this telecom age. As the WSJ piece notes, many calls between terrorists abroad are routed through the US, and though ostensibly they are foreign-to-foreign calls and therefore under the aegis of the CIA, the mere fact that they pass through a US switchboard makes them “domestic” calls, and therefore subject to FISA protracted approval. What should be a U.S. technology advantage in the war on terror—that many international calls come through U.S. switches—is now a liability. Once again, the lumbering nature of our legal system was never meant to keep up with a threat that moves at the speed of light through fiber-optic cables.

It’s time we did away with this arbitrary division. Following 9/11 President Bush and the Congress created the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which is meant to connect the dots in the kinds of cases I have described. But too often, it fails to act promptly enough.

The troubling trend among the Liberal Left is their reticence to move to redress these issues. I won’t impugn their patriotism, but I will impugn their attitude that terrorism is mainly a law enforcement matter. The disposition to see the captives of Gitmo as innocents, though most of them were caught on foreign battlefields engaged in combat with US forces, and to try to deal with them within our domestic courts, is a part of this mindset. But, so too is the refusal to address the changing nature of the terrorists use of technology against us. Both need to change.

We are paying for the mistakes in respect to Gitmo. But we could pay a much bigger price if our overly cautious handling of international phone traffic leads to a major intelligence failure—and if that, in turn, leads to another major attack on the U.S. homeland.

I advised a friend over lunch last week that his “weariness” with the war in Iraq is unwarranted. If the United States stays with it, we will win. The problem is the way in which our domestic morale has been undermined by incomplete reporting. I saw it in relation to the elections of 2004 when I visited Baghdad. The Iraqis were upbeat about voting, the media cynical, not bothering, apparently, to find out from the people whether they cared about voting. Millions did, of course.

The media did warn about a “civil war” between the Sunnis and the Shia, and that was a valid concern. But the analysis of causes was not adequate. Behind the strife were two forces trying to force conflict: Al Qaeda (and former Baathists) and Al Sadr’s Shia militia. Each provoked the others.

Now one sees that the average Iraqi is quite fed up with both extremes and recognizes that the United States does not want to hang around as an occupier—that the greater danger, in fact, is that we will leave too soon—and that Iraq cannot trust the Muslim extremists.

Now we are finally beginning to get some media reports that dare to diverge from the negative line laid down so long. John Burns, NY Times bureau chief in Baghdad, has long been giving an opinion that contrasts sharply with the snide sarcasm and defeatism of his employer’s editorials. Now comes an op-ed (and congratulations to the Times for running it) by two think tank observers from the liberal Brookings Institution.

Someone once pointed out to me a sad condition of conservatism; namely, that writers at the National Review didn’t used to believe something unless they saw it in the NY Times, even though they disliked the Times. (I hope that day is past, but sometimes I wonder.) But perhaps in a similar vein, liberals also won’t believe good news about long term prospects in Iraq until they see it in the Times. Is that possibly happening now?