Jeffrey Goldberg

Aspen Without Ideas

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:11:09 -0500

We're still in Aspen, though the Ideas Festival is over. As delightful as it was, it's also delightful not to hear anything about catastrophic global climate change for a couple of days.

Bill Clinton On Unstable ex-POWs

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:53:05 -0500

Bill Clinton is speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, and he said just now, apropos of almost nothing (actually, during a long peroration on Nelson Mandela): “Every living soul on this planet has some highly-justified anger. Everyone. If you know anybody who was a P.O.W. for any time, they can be going on for years and all of a sudden something will happen that will trigger all those bad memories.”

Not too subtle. Astonishingly, his interviewer, former Clinton Administration official Jane Wales, didn't follow-up. One subject Clinton didn't talk about at all: Barack Obama. He seemed to go out of his way, in fact, not to mention Obama's name. Which, when you think about, calls into question whether the P.O.W. shot was actually an intentional shot at all. On the other hand, I believe that Bill Clinton doesn't say things by accident.

Will the Monster Go Free?

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:28:13 -0500

As unbelievable as this sounds, Israel is actually thinking of swapping Samir Kuntar in a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. Kuntar is perhaps the most terrible person held in an Israeli prison, a man who crushed the skull of a Jewish child against a rock. Sometimes, these prisoner exchanges don't seem worth it.

"If Iran Goes Nuclear, Evil Will Win"

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:39:42 -0500

Ari Shavit, bringing it strong:

A nuclear Iran will endanger Israel's existence, the stability of the Middle East and the welfare of the West. An Iran stripped of nuclear ability will allow the Middle East to become more moderate; it will enable the West to uphold its values and perpetuate its way of life for a long time to come. In the short term, however, the wild scenario is multi-risk. There might be an intelligence failure or a military one. In any case, the Iran of the ayatollahs is a sophisticated and strong religious power. If it is backed into a corner, Iran, too, will prefer to go out with a bang and not a whimper. No one today knows for sure what the nature and impact of such a bang would be.

Ambinder and Chevron

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:10:45 -0500

I'm also obsessed with my Chevron water bottle.

Michael Gerson Blasts Saddam, Gets Booed

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:07:21 -0500

A small indication of the political leanings of some Aspen attendees: At a session with Jim Wallis, Michael Cromartie and our very own Ross Douthat, Michael Gerson pushed back against Wallis's contention that the Iraq war was immoral because it caused the loss of innocent life. Gerson noted that the previous regime in Iraq was responsible for terrible human rights violations, including genocide, and he went on to say that Saddam was "comparable to Pol Pot." This was apparently a controversial assertion, because it provoked boos and grumbling in the audience. I would note for the record that there seemed to be no Kurds in the audience.

Who Is Allowed to Interpret Islam?

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:55:17 -0500

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz has an interesting write-up of a panel I moderated yesterday (rather moderately moderated, I think), on which Dalia Mogahed and Irshad Manji disagreed about just about everything having to do with the modest subject of the interpretation of Islam. The best moment, for me, at least, came when someone complained about the lack of men among the panelists. Not a complaint you usually hear.

The Diminishing Threat from Al Qaeda

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:11:17 -0500

Why do I get nervous when everyone sounds like Fareed Zakaria?

It is by now overwhelmingly clear that Al Qaeda and its philosophy are not the worldwide leviathan that they were once portrayed to be. Both have been losing support over the last seven years. The terrorist organization's ability to plan large-scale operations has crumbled, their funding streams are smaller and more closely tracked. Of course, small groups of people can still cause great havoc, but is this movement an "existential threat" to the United States or the Western world? No, because it is fundamentally weak. Al Qaeda and its ilk comprise a few thousand jihadists, with no country as a base, almost no territory and limited funds. Most crucially, they lack an ideology that has mass appeal. They are fighting not just America but the vast majority of the Muslim world. In fact, they are fighting modernity itself.

All of this makes perfect sense, of course. But at yesterday's Aspen panel on nuclear non-proliferation, the general consensus was that there's a reasonably high likelihood that a nuclear device will be detonated in an American city, New York or Washington most likely, at some point in the next ten years. And the experts on the panel, John Holdren and Joe Cirincione among them, are not exactly attached to the Bush Administration worldview. After such an attack, we'll look back -- those of us still around, obviously -- on our efforts to combat al Qaeda and judge them inadequate to the task, just as we look back now on the Clinton Administration's pre-9/11 preparations (and the Bush Administration's, as well) as thoroughly inadequate. So I suppose I'm convinced of two things simultaneously: Al Qaeda is fairly weak, and not very popular at all, and that this might not matter as much as people think.

We're All Gonna Die

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:29:23 -0500

That, at least, is the impression I took away from a panel I just moderated on nuclear non-proliferation. I'll blog on this later, when I remember just what it was my panelists said (this is the problem of moderating panels -- you have no idea, as soon as they're over, what just transpired), but three of the four experts on the panel said that there is a 50-50 chance that there will be a nuclear attack on an American city in the next 10 years. An Adam Sandler movie it wasn't.

Untested and Untried

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:12:23 -0500

I note that Wesley Clark accuses John McCain of being "untested and untried." It doesn't strike me as smart for Barack Obama's advocates to be floating the term "untested and untried" out in the campaign ether.

An Addendum to the Shelby Steele Question

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:28 -0500

Now that I've heard the Big Ideas of the Big Thinkers showcased in the opening session of the festival, I think Shelby Steele should get credit for bringing an inflammatory, controversial idea to a public discussion. I say this after having listened to Sandra Day O'Connor speak about the importance of civic education. "We have to use technology to teach our young people about government structures," she said. I agree!

Shelby Steele: Kill 'Em All, Let the (White) God Sort 'Em Out

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:58:55 -0500

At least, that's what I thought I heard him say. I'm still in that tent at Aspen. David Bradley has finished speaking, and now various smart people have been invited up to the stage to share their ideas. The first one was a famous dancer of some sort, who made everyone in the audience (of a thousand, it seems) stand up and follow some dance move of his that involved extending an arm in a Nazi-like salute, which was momentarily disconcerting.

Steele is arguing for the end of white guilt, which is something legitimate to argue about, but now he's saying that America conducts itself with excessive politesse in Middle East war zones because of white guilt. And I always thought we tried to respect human rights whenever possible because it's the right thing to do, and, by the way, slaughtering people indiscriminately doesn't tend to win over the people you let live.

I'm not even sure, come to think of it, that I'm with his general notion that white people can stop worrying now about the consequences of slavery, and stop acting on those consequences. Maybe I'm a little bit freaked out because the audience here is 99.44 white. His talk gives me an idea, though: tomorrow, instead of moderating panels on Islam and on nuclear non-proliferation, I'm going to give a speech called, "Dear Christians: You Can Stop Thinking about Buchenwald Now."

Now John Holdren from Harvard is up there, telling us that climate change is a nearly-irreversible catastrophe, and he blames America for egregious fecklessness on the issue. I would note that many members of the audience at Aspen flew here on private jets.

His talk is making me thirsty. Two rows in front of me (one row in front of Jay Lauf's shirt) is Linda Resnick, the woman behind Fiji Water, who is at this moment drinking a bottle of same. I wish I could reach over and grab that bottle.

Shirt-blogging from Aspen

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:45:50 -0500

Yes, I know I promised, to those of you who care, to weigh in on the what’s-up-with-Joe-Klein-talking-about-the-Jews-that-way debate, and I will, as soon as I overcome my paralysis on the issue, but for now, I want to note that I’m at the Aspen Ideas Festival all week, along with a bunch of other Atlantic wackadoos, and a whole mess of other idea peddlers, including my dear friend Sandra Day O’Connor, who I haven’t actually technically ever met, though I'm sure she would love to hear my ideas if she did know me.

In any case, my capo di tutti capi, David Bradley, is speaking at this very moment, so I should listen, because, after all, a recent brain-scan has shown that I empathize with him quite a bit, but I just have to say that my attention is being diverted by a shirt worn by our publisher, Jay Lauf, who is sitting directly in front of me. I will try to get a picture of the shirt if I could figure out the camera in this laptop, but it’s a checkered, Caribbean-blue number with ornate designs inside the collar, and it’s a great-looking shirt, and it might very well epitomize the style known as “Aspen Casual” (though it might actually be too nice for Aspen) which I’ll never master. I've decided that I need better shirts generally, and this just brings it into sharp relief. Anyway, if I can get a picture of it, I’ll post it.

Usher Meets the Country Bear Jamboree Knock-Offs

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:53:15 -0500

Because it's Friday, and because I don't feel like blogging right now about Joe Klein's assertion that Jews who supported the Iraq War are guilty of dual loyalty:

Presbyterians Gone Wild

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:22:30 -0500

A church that just can't help itself:

The new text, lurching to a curious and condescending finale, maintains moral neutrality in the face of suggestions by some Christians, that if the Jews may not have killed Christ some 2000 years ago, they may be doing so now.
When Christian liberation theology considers "a situation of oppression in which the oppressing power is a state that is Jewish, with a population and leadership predominantly made up of Jews," the revised report reads, "Christians suffering oppression at the hands of the Jewish state, its army or its citizens, identify with Jesus in his suffering.

"Sometimes Palestinian Christians liken their experience to the passion of Jesus, or describe themselves as being crucified as Jesus was crucified," the text continues. "The implication of such descriptions is that the state of Israel and its policies are the crucifying power."