Truth, Force, Democracy at Home and Principal

Michael Scheuer is a former senior CIA officer who has written "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror." In today's San Francisco Chronicle he writes: "The war being waged against America by Osama bin Laden and his allies is not aimed at destroying our liberties or society. The war is motivated by intense Muslim hatred for U.S. polices, such as the protection of Arab tyrannies, like Saudi Arabia; unqualified support for Israel; and the U.S. military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Arabian Peninsula. To fail to recognize this reality is to ensure America's defeat."

"America, John Quincy Adams wrote, 'is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.' To do more than set a democratic example by her voice and behavior, Adams warned, would see America's 'fundamental maxims ... insensibly change from liberty to force. ... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.'

A Nation Founded on Christian Principles?

Not exactly. Brooke Allen writing in The Nation explains that no matter what George Bush says, "our constitution makes no mention whatever of God."

"The lesson the President has learned best--and certainly the one that has been the most useful to him--is the axiom that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. One of his Administration's current favorites is the whopper about America having been founded on Christian principles. Our nation was founded not on Christian principles but on Enlightenment ones. God only entered the picture as a very minor player, and Jesus Christ was conspicuously absent."

Elections Are Not Democracy

Fareed Zakaria gets it right in this week's Newsweek column. He describes three prerequisites for democracy in Iraq: limited ethnic conflict, minimize problems stemming from easy oil money and respect for the rule of law. Iraq is not doing well on any.

"'The one precondition for democracy to work is a consensus among major ethnic, regional, or religious groups,' says Larry Diamond, one of the leading experts on democratization. This has not happened. Instead the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds are increasingly wary of one another and are thinking along purely sectarian lines. This 'groupism' also overemphasizes the religious voices in these communities, and gives rise to a less secular, less liberal kind of politics. "