bin Laden

SHORTLY AFTER her confirmation as the State Department's top communications whiz last October, Charlotte Beers said she hoped to create among the world's one billion Muslims an "understanding that they don't need to kill us to get our attention."

To accomplish that patronizing goal, Beers and her State Department colleagues have undertaken a "public diplomacy" campaign in the Muslim world. The effort will naturally require unceasing "dialogue" and involve lots of "listening." There will be pamphlets, CD-ROMs, public service announcements, a State Department magazine for young Muslim males.

WHAT DID ROYCE LAMBERTH KNOW . . . ?

For a press corps obsessing over who knew what when before September 11, there was little attention paid last week to the following revelation in Newsweek (The Scrapbook believes in crediting reporters, but there were 11 bylines on this particular piece):

"Newsweek has learned there was one other major complication as America headed into that threat-spiked summer.

THANK YOU, Chairman Biden, Senator Helms, and members of the committee, for inviting me to testify before you today. You have asked me to address the question, "What's next in the war on terrorism?"

The short answer is that Iraq is next. I am not simply saying that Iraq should be next--although I think it should be. I am rather drawing a straightforward conclusion from President Bush's State of the Union speech, and from the logic of the war itself.

THE ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER has undertaken a heroic and important task: getting reporters to think about religion. A few years ago a bunch of journalists and I were flown up to Maine to learn about evangelical Christianity from a group of academics. It was an intriguing and coherent lesson on the roots and nature of evangelism from scholars such as Grant Wacker of Duke.

Then, last week, another bunch of us were flown down to Florida to learn about Islam.

WHAT NEXT in the war on terrorism? We hear from many corners that it is still too early to ask this question. If you mention the word Iraq, respectable folks at the State Department and on the New York Times op-ed page get red-faced. After all, the mission in Afghanistan is not over. The destruction of Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network is not finished.

THE ROAD BETWEEN Poso and Tentena on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi runs past burned-out homes, stores, and churches, and is blocked by checkpoints adorned with pictures of Osama bin Laden. Some have signs proclaiming him "our leader." Islamic militias stop vehicles and check identity papers. Christians have been dragged out of cars and buses and summarily shot.

The checkpoints are the work of the Laskar Jihad militia. In the last two years it has slaughtered thousands.

BIN LADEN'S WEAK HORSE

The new bin Laden video has been so thoroughly chewed over by the commentariat that The Scrapbook has only a couple of points to make. First, the tape was much more effective at strengthening the convictions of those who had already grasped bin Laden's depravity than at changing the minds of the deluded. This is unsurprising. If you are inclined to believe that the Mossad engineered the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then you will find it easy to believe that the Mossad can create propaganda videos starring an Osama bin Laden look-alike.

FORT BRAGG, N.C.

Despite the low-rent ambiance of Bragg Blvd.--the land of Park'n'Pawns and $1.99 fried chicken plates--Fort Bragg has always been synonymous with the Army's elite. Arriving at the home of the 82nd Airborne and Special Forces, visitors often experience the contact-buzz that comes from occupying the same ground as the Green Berets and Delta Force.

ON NOVEMBER 29, Attorney General John Ashcroft introduced President Bush to an audience of the nation's 94 U.S. attorneys. Bush began his remarks by commending Ashcroft for "principled" and "steady" leadership. "I guess we call you General," he said. Then, turning to the U.S. attorneys, he added, "That means you all are in the Army.

DID SADDAM HUSSEIN offer asylum to Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar? The answer, at least according to a report last week in Ummat, an Urdu-language newspaper in Karachi, Pakistan, is yes. The paper claims that a senior Iraqi diplomat, Taha Husseyn, met in Kandahar with the Taliban's Mavlana Jalal ud-Din Haqqani.

IN THE WAKE of September 11, what can a psychiatrist contribute to America's defense? Nothing, of course, to defend the nation from bombs, but something perhaps to defend it against confusion--and here America certainly needs help.

At the University of Pennsylvania, the provost called several neuroscientists together to consider whether the terrorists should be viewed as bad or mad: evildoers or sufferers from an exculpating mental disease. The group reached no conclusion, but one participant thought "brain images" might give the answer.

MY TORY FRIENDS have become very worried--angry even--about British prime minister Tony Blair's newfound popularity in America. What especially grates on them is that Blair is now admired by American conservatives, the last Tory constituency of any value.

"It won't last, you know," they tell me, but I recognize the anxiety in their voices. They whine that "Tony"--he's always Tony to those who hate him most, with the first syllable not just emphasized, but pronounced in a slightly higher tone--will use his newfound influence eventually to introduce something wicked, like the euro.