Khatami in the Cathedral
" Interfaith dialogue" is all the rage these days: understanding our commonality by celebrating our differences. Or something like that. It's infected venerable pillars of establishment religion, such as the National Cathedral in Washington. There, they've found a way to take the edge off all the God 'n' Jesus talk by featuring speakers like Larry Dossey, a mind-body expert who "celebrates the healing power of music, touch and mystery." Which is not to say they don't boldly espouse the most hallowed tenets of the Episcopal tradition, such as offering a "Five Pillars of Islam" course through their Cathedral College.
The National Cathedral, then, was the perfect setting to welcome former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, the seniormost Iranian to visit our country in nearly three decades. With his need-for-understanding patter, his undeserved reputation among world leaders as a "reformer" and a beacon of tolerance (disputed by the 200 or so Iranian exiles who lined the Cathedral sidewalks accusing Khatami of everything from journalistic repression to coddling terrorists to murder), and with his tendency to throw not-so-subtle elbows at American leaders (he's compared George W. Bush's rhetoric to that of Osama bin Laden), Khatami is shaping up as the Persian Jimmy Carter.
Nitpicky, over-analytical pedants might ask, "How can we have a dialogue when your successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, keeps threatening to wipe Israel off the map?" Details . . . Starting a dialogue can be a messy business. Sometimes, you have to scream before you can whisper, just so you have everyone's attention.
Khatami, for his part, isn't a screamer. Aside from the occasional jaw-dropper--like calling Hezbollah "a shining sun that illuminates and warms the hearts of all Muslims and supporters of freedom in the world"--he mainly speaks the language of reconciliation, giving addresses like his famed "Dialogue Among Civilizations." The U.N. thought the concept such a swell idea that Kofi Annan declared 2001 the "Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations." The dialogue sort of got off track around September of that year, after wayward members of our shared Abrahamic tradition blew up the World Trade Center.
At the Cathedral the evening of September 7, Khatami's "interfaith dialogue" turned out to be more of an intrafaith monologue, since he did most of the talking, and in Farsi no less. Journalists were given full translations of the speech beforehand. "The bad news," said one, "is it's boring. The good news is it's short--we'll be home in time for football." Speaking in the flowery, abstract verbiage of a political philosopher, which he was until he signed on to the Iranian revolution, Khatami spoke of "the contradictions between individualistic liberalism and collectivist socialism," of the West's need to "take a step forward and view itself from another angle," and of how "democratic systems" oughtn't be "limited to liberal democracies."
Earlier, Khatami told reporters that Iran is just making nuclear energy, not weapons, even though he was saying so just a week after Ahmadinejad passed out awards to his nuclear scientists on Iranian national television, for such meritorious accomplishments as "notable management of the building of centrifuge taps, and other sensitive and complex components."
The crowd--a radical chic mélange of gray D.C. eminences and powdered and polished Iranians--gave him a standing ovation, unintimidated by the protesters outside, who tried to shame them with photos of Iranians back home getting hung from cranes and buried up to their waist before being stoned. Maybe, as our hosts suggested, he really is building a bridge between civilizations. A suspension bridge. As in, you'd have to suspend lots of disbelief to think his pretty rhetoric leads anywhere.
Senate Intelligence-- an Oxymoron?
"According to postwar detainee debriefs--including debriefs of Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz--Saddam was resistant to cooperating with al Qa'ida or any other Islamist groups."
This is good enough, apparently, for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. If you read the "Phase II" report issued by the committee late last week, it is clear that the final word on Saddam Hussein's relationships with Islamic terrorists will be given to Saddam Hussein.
According to the report, the deposed dictator was asked whether he might cooperate with al Qaeda because "the enemy of the enemy is my friend." The report uncritically offers his response. "Saddam answered that the United States was not Iraq's enemy."
Unfortunately, the debriefers didn't follow up with a question about his party's Nov. 8, 1998, call for the "highest levels of jihad" against American interests: "The escalation of the confrontation and the disclosure of its dimensions and the aggressive intentions now require an organized, planned, influential and conclusive enthusiasm against U.S. interests."
Where the report is not credulous, it is confused. For instance, the writers of the report seem not to understand that "Shaykh Salman al-Awdah" (p. 72) is the same guy as "Shaikh Sulayman al-Udah" (p. 73) and that he was a spiritual mentor to Osama bin Laden. That Saddam would agree to rebroadcast Awdah/Udah's sermons on Iraqi national TV would seem difficult to reconcile with the idea that Saddam opposed any cooperation with Islamists. At another point, the report claims that Saddam Hussein considered al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi an "outlaw." In the substance of the report, the claim is attributed to a senior Iraqi official. In the conclusions about Zarqawi the same information is attributed to an "al Qa'ida detainee."
Then there's the reporting on Ahmed Hikmat Shakir, the Iraqi national who facilitated the travel of Khalid al-Midhar, a 9/11 hijacker, to the key 9/11 planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000. No one disputes this. The Senate report notes: "Shakir was a part-time facilitator of Arab visitors at the Kuala Lumpur airport for the Iraqi Embassy." Shakir fled the country one week after the meeting ended. The CIA acknowledged that his disappearance "raised suspicions about his connections and intentions."
More from the CIA: "Shakir's travel and past contact linked him to a worldwide network of Sunni extremist groups and personalities including suspects in the bombing of the 1993 World Trade Center [sic] and indirectly to senior al Qa'ida associates. His relationship with the embassy employee could suggest a link between Baghdad and Shakir's extremist contacts, but it could also be the case of an Iraqi expatriate finding a temporary job for a fellow national." Those "contacts" include Musab Yasin, the brother of 1993 World Trade Center bomber Abu Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi national. (The report never mentions either Yasin.) The "contacts" also include Abu Hajer al Iraqi, an al Qaeda leader described in court testimony as Osama bin Laden's "best friend." No one disputes any of this.
The Senate report, though, finds conclusive the assurances of a foreign government service to the CIA that Shakir had "no link . . . to any foreign intelligence service, radical religious group or terrorist operation." This finding plainly contradicts the evidence in the possession of the U.S. intelligence community.
On the other hand, it also admirably suits the purposes of Senate Intelligence committee Democrats, who were quick to claim that the report proves Bush misled the country into the Iraq war. If only the Republicans controlled the Senate!
Congratulations
A tip of THE SCRAPBOOK's homburg to our friends at the New Criterion, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in the current issue.
When it was established, in 1982, the New Criterion assigned itself the task of speaking "plainly and vigorously about the problems that beset the life of the arts and the life of the mind in our society." Under the leadership of Hilton Kramer, Roger Kimball, and their colleagues, it has done all that, and more. Not only has the New Criterion proved vital, entertaining, and durable--its namesake, T.S. Eliot's Criterion, closed its doors after 17 years--but it has also become the indispensable voice in the cultural debates that define our times. And by marrying trenchant style to the highest standards, it guarantees itself another quarter-century of distinction, and more.