The Whistle of a Distant Train

Unfortunately Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne was unable to make it to his previously scheduled lectures at NCSU today, being afflicted by the flu (as I am today). He does have an interesting opinion piece in the Post this morning about challenging John McCain's assertion that terrorism is the "trancendent challenge of the 21st Century". His arguments are based around the idea that terrorism should not be the predominant issue in our policy realm, and that challenging McCain on this agenda could provide ample fodder for his Democratic challengers.

A quick excerpt:

"Whether McCain is right or wrong matters to everything the United States will do in the coming years. It is incumbent upon McCain to explain what he really means by "transcendent challenge."

Presumably, he's saying that Islamic extremism is more important than everything else -- the rise of China and India as global powers, growing resistance to American influence in Europe, the weakening of America's global economic position, the disorder and poverty in large parts of Africa, the alienation of significant parts of Latin America from the United States. Is it in our national interest for all these issues to take a back seat to terrorism?"

Another quick one:

"In his new book on neoconservatism, "They Knew They Were Right," Jacob Heilbrunn quotes Owen Harries, an early neoconservative whose realist bent has made him skeptical of the latest turn in the thinking of his erstwhile comrades. Harries argues that viewing terrorism as an ideological challenge akin to Nazism or Soviet communism is neither accurate nor prudent.

"I think it's to belittle the historical experiences of World War II," Harries says, "not to speak of the Cold War, to equate the terrorists of today and the damage they're capable of with the totalitarian regimes of the previous century." Underestimating our enemies is a mistake, but so, too, is endowing them with more power than they have."