Slow News Day

Well, maybe not, but it will be for me, as I've got a producer coming into my house (!) to finish up a project. So I'll be otherwise engaged.

Looks like the UN is almost done with the cease-fire agreement that won't be acceptable to the countries and terror groups involved in the fighting. Olmert has said as much.

And it is noteworthy that the Muslim community in Britain tipped off the authorities about the terror plot. This shows you how cooperating with Muslim moderates, as opposed to, you know, bombing and threatening them, can yield positive results. As Fred Kaplan says, we need to find alliances wherever we can get them:

According to the Times of London, Pakistan's intelligence service worked "closely with MI5 and Scotland Yard" and, at the request of British authorities, supplied information that proved "crucial in thwarting the attacks" and in arresting the alleged conspirators, most of them apparently of Pakistani descent [...]

There's a broader lesson here, and it speaks to the Bush administration's present jam throughout the Middle East and in other danger zones. If the British had adopted the same policy toward dealing with Pakistan that Bush has adopted toward dealing with, say, Syria or Iran (namely, it's an evil regime, and we don't speak with evil regimes), then a lot of passenger planes would have shattered and spilled into the ocean, hundreds or thousands of people would have died, and the world would have suddenly been plunged into very scary territory.

It is time to ask: Which is the more "moral" course—to shun odious regimes as a matter of principle or to take unpleasant steps that might prevent mass terror?

The two courses aren't always mutually exclusive. There are degrees of odiousness, some of them intolerable; and there are degrees of terror, some of them unavoidable.

In addition, engaging so-called "evil" regimes might end up making them not so evil. The "good guys good, bad guys bad" approach makes the bad guys worse, and neglects the good help bad guys might be able to give. I don't even think the countries we do engage which have enabled Islamic fundamentalists, namely Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are pressured in any way to stop this enabling in exchange for support and cooperation. It seems like we talk to these countries on two tracks: help us to an extent, but there are other issues we don't have to talk about but accept with a wink and a nod.

In other words, there is a major debate that is desperately needed in this country about the tactics in this so-called war on terror. What is not needed is using terror attacks as an excuse to send out a fundraising letter.