The Way We Live Now

Beyond the headlines, we occasionally get “soft” news about how the post-9/11 world really is, as we do today in disturbing narratives about the unseen wars in Iran and Pakistan–patterns of secrets and lies that Americans and their representatives in Washington either don’t fully know or want to talk about publicly.

In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh details a new “major escalation of covert operations against Iran…designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership” as part of a literal tug of war in the White House and Congress on how to deal with the nuclear threat from Tehran.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports “a secret plan to make it easer for the Pentagon’s Special Operations forces to launch missions into the snow-capped mountains of Pakistan to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda,” a plan that exists only on paper as a result of Washington indecision and in-fighting.

Until the Bush Administration departs next January, it will be easy enough to blame all this dangerous confusion on their certified bunglers, but how well will successors of either party in a country that prides itself on government transparency be equipped to navigate this shadowy world of shifting alliances among violent splinter groups?

Read the rest of this entry.