[Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University.]

As George W. Bush and John Kerry get set for their first televised debate tonight, a U.S. historian looks at a recent book that may help explain why the Democrats are having trouble in the polls.

Approach this book with caution, fellow progressives. It may confirm your worst fear.

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, two smart Brits who work for The Economist, have written a vividly detailed study (The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, Penguin Press) of why conservatives rule American politics. What is worse, they maintain that the right is likely to dominate for some time, even if the Democrats eke out a victory this fall.

The Right Nation has nothing in common with the crude polemics by the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter that growl from racks at every airport and mall. Micklethwait and Wooldridge gaze on their American subjects with the skepticism of European agnostics who've grown up in a tidy welfare state. The moralism of the evangelical right makes them shudder, and they mock the hypocrisy of a president who rails against"big government" but has blithely run up a record deficit. A keen grasp of history and demographic trends firms up their prose, which is spiked with the dry wit that seems the birthright of every Oxford graduate.

Many Republicans, the authors report, believe high deficits will prevent liberals from enacting future social programs. That logic"is rather like saying that, because your brother-in-law drinks too much, you're going to drink all the alcohol in the house before he visits for the Memorial Day weekend."

All this frames an argument that the most confirmed W-hater should take seriously. In their view, three simple reasons explain why conservatives keep defeating the left: The right wins the battle of ideas, has a more determined and focused army of activists, and is reaping the benefits of long-term changes in American society.

The unlikely figure of William Jefferson Clinton proved an expert witness to the ideological sway of his opponents."The era of big government is over," declared the only Democratic president to win re-election since FDR.

Clinton accomplished two historic feats that conservatives had long demanded -- a balanced budget and punitive welfare"reform." But his grand liberal dream to provide every American with medical insurance was a spectacular flop. Do you want a health-care system run like the post office? asked the pitchmen for the right.

It's a myth that federal largesse goes mainly to lazy and immoral Americans -- or ungrateful foreigners. But, after decades of skilful propaganda, most Americans believe this. The golden era when Congress created Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Environmental Protection Agency, seems to belong not just to an earlier century, but to a different nation.

The men from The Economist appreciate how diverse is the cadre responsible for this sea change. At the top, of course, are white guys in expensive suits, men such as Ralph Reed and William Kristol familiar to anyone who watches a Sunday morning talk show from the U.S. But the authors also introduce pro-life college kids from Colorado Springs who believe conservatism is a benevolent creed, and they identify the many women in Bush's inner circle who've enjoyed the support of right-wing foundations.

Rich conservatives, the authors point out, don't really donate more money than do their liberal counterparts in New York and Hollywood. But they target nearly all of it to projects whose sole mission is to advance the right's cause.

The authors' claim that the future smiles on conservatives is more dubious. Micklethwait and Wool-dridge show that people who own stocks and homes and attend church tend to vote Republican, and those indicators are rising. Yet, if one deletes piety from the equation, Democrats do just as well. Latinos are the wild card in such electoral predictions. The authors predict the upwardly mobile and U.S.-born will shift toward the GOP. But most Latinos toil at working-class jobs and will probably do so for years to come. They are a natural constituency for progressives -- if, indeed, the left can take its doctrine of social equality to heart.

And there's the rub. The left can't control demography, but it can build a smarter movement. In 1970, John Mitchell, Richard Nixon's leading henchman, said,"This country is going so far to the right, you are not even going to recognize it." With zeal and an eye for liberal soft spots, conservatives set about fulfilling his prophecy.

Meanwhile, the left fragmented into a variety of worthy causes -- from environmental defence to gay and lesbian rights to affirmative action. These fragments have helped make the United States a more humane place. But they forgot that the first rule of democratic politics is to state a few forceful ideas and to make clear how they can benefit the majority. Even Americans who despise the right know exactly what it believes:"family values" and"less government." Since Sept. 11, 2001, conservatives have added the defeat of"Islamo-fascism" to the agenda.

Can progressives unite behind ideas of similar clarity and appeal? Can they rid themselves of a nagging contempt for the unhip, the poorly educated, and the God-fearing? If the left is not a movement of and for working people -- blemishes and all -- then it has little chance to regain its previous influence.

Micklethwait and Wooldridge conclude their immensely valuable book with a sobering prediction. If Kerry wins, they write,"he will be reduced to trying to reconstruct the status quo ante, cutting back on tax cuts for the super-rich and repairing relations with foreigners (up to a point), but generally coping with an agenda dictated by the right."

Such a future is not inevitable; as John Mitchell knew, history often has a surprise up her sleeve. But if progressives want to prove the right wrong, they'll have to stop boasting about how enlightened they are and start winning over the heart of America.

As the presidential debates approach, some anxious Democrats are taking comfort in the five-inch height advantage of their candidate, who stands 6 feet 4 inches to George W. Bush's 5 feet 11 inches. They remember, all too well, the 1988 presidential debates between George H.W. Bush and Michael S. Dukakis.

At the time, the newspaper columnist Charles Krauthammer described the elder Bush as "tall and terrible. He whined. He stumbled. He looked nervous and hyperactive. From the first question about drugs, he was on the defensive." Then Krauthammer also mentioned the results of a focus group of undecided voters convened by The Washington Post, who ultimately leaned toward Bush. After the candidates shook hands, one member had explicitly mentioned the six-inch gap in height.

The focus-group participants had cited other factors, of course, but the possibly fatal handshake was added to the capital's political lore. "Half to two-thirds of what people take away is visual rather than verbal," a Republican pollster told The New York Times in 1996. "It's huge." To some Democrats, that principle implies the need for a physically imposing candidate. After the initial surge of Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, some supporters of rival Democrats stooped to open heightism, deriding Dean as an example of "short man's syndrome."

How did it come to this? Why is stature now considered such a political advantage -- or liability?

It's easy to blame the tube for fostering a flight from serious issues into glitter, froth, and measuring tape. But taller was seen as better in the 19th century, too, and long before. The already imposing Lincoln may have chosen his signature stove-pipe hat to further accentuate the strong point of his appearance. Herodotus heard that the Ethiopians made the tallest and strongest men their kings.

Still, height was not considered destiny. James Madison's nickname, "Little Jemmy" -- his height is usually given at 5 feet 4 inches -- was not politically fatal. Lincoln's shorter opponents and their fans accepted and even flaunted their stature. Stephen A. Douglas was famous as the "little giant," and Gen. George B. McClellan, whatever his failings as a Civil War commander, won the 1864 Democratic nomination as "Little Mac," a phrase his troops had always used affectionately. (A brilliant military engineer, he was also compared admiringly with Napoleon earlier in his career.) Friend and foe spent little time talking about height. It was a given, to be used derisively or positively.

That attitude changed toward the end of the century. Timothy A. Judge, a professor of management at the University of Florida, and Daniel M. Cable, an associate professor of management and organizational behavior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who study height and success, have observed in a recent analysis of the literature on the topic in the Journal of Applied Psychology that William McKinley, elected in 1896, was the last president shorter than the average man. And there were signs of the end of the good-natured banter of the waning century. McKinley's journalistic critics portrayed him as a "little boy" controlled by his big nursemaid, the Republican boss Mark Hanna, and the growing big-business trusts.

Fear of the big began to mix with mockery of the small. An unpublished University of Iowa dissertation by Michael Tavel Clarke, "These Days of Large Things: The Culture of Size in America, 1865-1930" (2001), suggests that the interest in personal size and strength was partly a response to the emergence of industrial combinations and other corporate giants that threatened to crush individuality. At the same time, the scientific professionals of the late-19th and early-20th centuries regarded small stature in Africa, Asia, and Europe as a throwback to primitivism and feared its importation. Eugenic interpretations of stature abounded.

... Some Lessons Learned

After lending a helping hand in a disaster, a natural response is to consider, “What if this happened to us? How would we fare? What lessons can be learned?” Professionals managing museums, libraries, archeological sites, and other heritage resources, who ask these questions and look through the “fog of war” in Iraq, will find many poignant lessons emerging. Beyond the six lessons suggested below, additional heritage preservation lessons will emerge for those who seek them from the events in Iraq. Whether the lessons are new or old, they are worthy of review and contemplation in the context of the preservation of Iraqi cultural heritage.

Lesson 1: Museums, libraries, and sites are symbols of authority. As symbols of the ruling authority, museums, libraries, and historic sites are targets for those fighting against that authority. Although personal profit motivated much of the looting at the Iraqi National Museum, anger at Saddam Hussein’s regime and the Ba’athist Party was also a factor. As Donny George said:

The people saw the Americans firing on the gates of Saddam’s palaces and then opening the doors to the people and saying: ‘Come and take this stuff, it’s yours now.’ So they started, and it became a sort of rage as they attacked every government building. I don’t make excuses but, you know, after 30 years of a regime like that, pressure builds up on people. Most of them were not educated, andto them the museum was just one more government building. They didn’t just take antiquities but 95% of the office furniture, all computers, most of the cameras. My office was two feet deep in papers; my desk was broken into three pieces and I found my chair 100 yards away."

Similarly, archeological sites are part of a country’s cultural patrimony; they are protected by law and are symbols and targets. Saddam Hussein left little doubt about his understanding of this principle, when he rebuilt the ancient cities of Babylon and Nineveh in an attempt to validate his regime. When he learned that original Babylonian bricks were stamped with the name “Nebuchadnezzar II” and the equivalent of “605 BC,” he wanted a similar statement on reconstruction bricks acknowledging his role. They say, “In the reign of the victorious Saddam Hussein, the president of the Republic, may God keep him, the guardian of the great Iraq and the renovator of its renaissance and the builder of its great civilization, the rebuilding of the great city of Babylon was done in 1987.”

Following the events of September 11, 2001, the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) greatly increased the security at its iconic sites, such as the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall, and the Washington Monument, which are highly vulnerable symbols of the United States. In recent years, managers of museums and national sites have needed no reminding of this vulnerability. Likewise, the museums in Iraq learned this lesson long ago. The staff has evacuated the collections of the National Museum many times, beginning with the Iran–Iraq war in the 1980s.35 Although U.S. museums and sites have increased their security, few would be able to implement evacuation plans on the scale of and in the timeframe demonstrated by the Iraqi National Museum.

Lesson 2: Early news of war or disaster is often wrong (in unpredictable ways). “It is very common for the first information following a crisis to be wrong, and when I say wrong, I mean wrong. So let us all try to be responsible in how we speak about this issue until we know the facts, and let us dedicate ourselves to gathering the facts as expeditiously and efficiently as possible,” said the secretary general of the International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO) –Interpol when he addressed the May 6 meeting on cultural property looting in Iraq.

Acting precipitously based on early news can be a political liability, a step in the wrong direction that will have to be retraced, and a catalyst for disharmony with other parties who are critical to the resolution. All of these mistakes occurred in the Iraqi National Museum case.

The first news reports, on April 12 and in the weeks following, erroneously reported that looters had taken 170,000 artifacts from the National Museum. This figure was followed by reported figures of 50,000, 270,000, 90,000, 200,000, 1,200, 10–15%, and fewer than 100 before U.S. and Iraqi museum officials clarified the original misunderstanding. By mid-May Colonel Bogdanos called 170,000 a “gross, if dramatic, exaggeration.”

Museum authorities were reported as “blaming shoddy reporting amid the ‘fog of war’ for creating the impression that the majority of the institution’s 170,000 items had been looted.”38 As Donny George explained:

There was a mistake. Someone asked us what is the number of pieces in the whole collection. We said over 170,000, and they took that as the number lost. Reporters came in and saw empty shelves and reached the conclusion that all was gone. But before the war, we evacuated all of the small pieces and emptied the showcases except for fragile or heavy material that was difficult to move.

Following these announcements, the numbers on missing items that U.S. and Iraqi museum authorities cited were similar, and evolving at the same rate. As of the end of July, that figure was estimated at 13,50040 and remained at that level into September.

Within a week of the looting, three members of the president’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee had resigned. The chairman’s letter of resignation cited “the wanton and preventable destruction” of Iraq’s National Museum of Antiquities.42 Immediately, following the first news, scholars sought to explain the magnitude of the looting of the National Museum by comparing it with other major cultural disasters. It was called the greatest cultural disaster of the last 500 years. Several scholars said that not since the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258 had there been looting on this scale.43 The American Schools of Oriental Research compared the museum looting to “the sack of Constantinople, the burning of the library at Alexandria, the Vandal and Mogul invasions, and the ravages of the conquistadors.” One commenter said it is “a tragedy that has no parallel in world history; it is as if the Uffizi, the Louvre, or all the museums of Washington DC had been wiped out in one fell swoop.”44 Now that the figures have been drastically revised downward and the “fog” is beginning to clear, some have expressed second thoughts about these comparisons.45 Some journalists—and, according to reports, at least one professional colleague— have been critical of the Iraqi museum officials for not correcting the misunderstanding about the 170,000 items sooner. A defensive backlash from some parts of the press sought to discredit both the Iraqi museum authorities and the scholars who had commented on the early news, and even pit one against the other. A few individuals took the bait and some strong words were exchanged. One journalist reported, “[Donny] George is now quoted as saying that that items lost could represent ‘a small percentage’ of the collection and blamed shoddy reporting for the exaggeration.” A scholar, who heard Donny George speak at the British Museum at the end of April, commented, “Is it not a little strange that quite so many journalists went away with the wrong impression, while Mr. George made little or no attempt to clarify the context of the figure of 170,000 which he repeated with such regularity and gusto before, during, and after that meeting.”46 Other scholars responded in letters to the editor:

[The reporter] would have us believe that unscrupulous, Ba’athist curators of the Iraq museum in Baghdad have deliberately overplayed the pillaging and destruction on April 9-11.... At no time did George claim ... that the entire contents of the museum had gone ... our high opinion of the character of Dr. George and hiscolleagues has been formed over two decades of working with them.... George deserves the world’s praise, not its condemnation, for saving so many of Iraq’s treasures....

Cultural heritage professionals are in the position of both releasing information to the press, as the Iraqi museum authorities did, and reacting to information that others release, as American, European, and other scholars and professionals did in response to the news of the Iraqi museum looting. Care must be taken not to succumb to the immediate questions of the press seeking to fill the public’s 24/7 appetite for facts, figures, and opinions, especially ones that create “shock and awe” and will make headlines. Knowing that the first news is often wrong, waiting for the “fog of war” to lift before making definitive decisions or statements may be prudent. If, however, a statement is incorrect or misinterpreted, an immediate correction is in order to avert the ballooning of misunderstandings and hard feelings. In addition, designating a single person or office in the museum as a primary point of contact with the press is essential to ensure consistency of information.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

One consequence of Sept. 11 was the emergence of an academic industry, which for lack of a better term can be called jihad studies. You'd have thought such a speciality would already exist, yet for decades students of Islam and Arabia recoiled from the subject. At scholarly conferences there would be two dozen lectures with titles such as"The problem of Ottoman heroic narratives," but not a peep about the problem of holy warriors.

Scholars are playing catch-up, and not just Middle East specialists. Militant Islam is now being studied in departments of political science, psychology and international affairs. It's an interdisciplinary affair. One widely circulated paper,"Genesis of Suicide Terrorism," was written by an anthropologist and appeared in the journal Science.

If you ask me, though, the most compelling analysis of the current threat belongs to a professor of medieval history, of all people. Richard Landes teaches at Boston University where, as director of the Center for Millennial Studies, he has become a leading authority on apocalyptic religious thinking.

Although his expertise is Christianity, it occurred to him that Islamism, whose adherents seek to create utopic Islamic societies, is best understood as an apocalyptic phenomenon. He spelled out his ideas in a long interview earlier this month with a Jerusalem-based think tank. Apocalyptic theology, he says, is characterized by"a belief that a cosmic transformation is imminent." And when this belief sweeps up"groups, movements and whole populations," we have an apocalyptic moment in history.

Since Sept. 11, the foreign-policy set has agreed that Islamism has expansionist goals and a totalitarian structure. Some analysts have even used the term Islamofascism. Mr. Landes spells out the connections. Osama bin Laden, Iran's mullahs and an untold number of clerics across the Middle East are apocalyptic activists, just as Hitler and his disciples were. The Nazi's"thousand-year Reich" was literally a millennial kingdom.

"Nazism exploded from a toxic cocktail of conspiracism (and) rage at a perceived humiliation of the German people," says Mr. Landes. The Arab-Muslim world is today the epicentre of conspiracy thinking, its inhabitants also consumed with their own perceived humiliation.

Nazism required followers to have" complete contempt for human life." The cult of the suicide bomber -- the fetishizing of death -- suggests a similar pathology in parts of the Arab-Muslim world. The Nazis promised salvation, embodied in the worldwide triumph of the Aryan race; Islamists promise salvation, embodied in the establishment of Allah's rule on earth. Both movements sought -- or seek -- to harness modern technology in the effort to re-make the world. Nazi death camps were models of industrial efficiency; Islamists teach themselves to fly jet planes and use encoded computer programs.

In each, the figure of the Jew plays a starring role. The Nazis saw the destruction of the Jews as a necessary, purifying step on the path to victory. Mr. Landes calls the Holocaust an"apocalyptic deed."

Meanwhile, the creation of Israel is known across the Muslim world as the Naqba, an apocalyptic-type catastrophe. This explains why the genocidal anti-Jewish propaganda in the Arabic mass media mirrors Nazi literature. Islamists, too, see themselves as engaged in cosmic battle, and in this battle the Jews (or Zionists) are"Satan's agents in the world."

Mr. Landes finds further parallels."As Hitler screamed about Jewish plots to conquer the world and enslave mankind, he was hatching precisely those plans." Today, Arab leaders accuse Israel of practising collective punishment by destroying the homes of suicide bombers when in fact it is suicide bombings that represent"the most heinous form of collective punishment -- the random killing of innocent civilians."

Apocalyptic yearnings are not inherently dangerous. Many religions envision a better world. Even secular political movements (who among us was not an idealist in university?) can have a tinge of messianism. Apocalyptic thinking becomes deadly when it supposes that" cataclysmic destruction" is necessary to bring about the messianic age.

The Sept. 11 attacks were an effort to spark cataclysmic destruction. A nuclear bomb smuggled into Tel Aviv, or London, could be another such spark.

Traditional political terrorism was easier to fight because the perpetrators had demands that, at least in theory, could be addressed. Those who are motivated by an apocalyptic vision have non-negotiable aims, as the world learned from Hitler. It's significant that the Sept. 11 hijackers never bothered to make demands, presumably knowing that no mortal being could meet them.

There's another lesson. Marginal ideas tend to stay on the margins. That's why the flat-earth society and the temperance movement never really got anywhere. But introduce apocalyptic elements and everything changes.

"Successful millennial movements, like the Nazis, spread from the fringes to the centre," says Mr. Landes."And in cultures that are vulnerable to apocalyptic messages -- e.g., the conspiracist and disoriented Arab world -- technology greatly amplifies its impact."

It's interesting that a historian of the Middle Ages is able to articulate, better than any professional security strategist, exactly what is at stake in this global conflict.

John Kerry is being pilloried for his shocking Senate testimony 34 years ago that many U.S. soldiers—not just a few "rogues"—were committing atrocities against the Vietnamese. U.S. military records that were classified for decades but are now available in the National Archives back Kerry up and put the lie to his critics. Contrary to what those critics, including the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, have implied, Kerry was speaking on behalf of many soldiers when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971, and said this:

They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

The archives have hundreds of files of official U.S. military investigations of such atrocities committed by American soldiers. I've pored over those records—which were classified for decades—for my Columbia University dissertation and, now, this Voice article. The exact number of investigated allegations of atrocities is unknown, as is the number of such barbaric incidents that occurred but weren't investigated. Some war crimes, like the Tiger Force atrocities exposed last year by The Toledo Blade, have only come to light decades later. Others never will. But there are plentiful records to back up Kerry's 1971 testimony point by point. Following (with the names removed or abbreviated) are examples, directly from the archives:

"They had personally raped"

On August 12, 1967, Specialist S., a military intelligence interrogator, "raped . . . a 13-year-old . . . female" in an interrogation hut in a P.O.W. compound. He was convicted of assault and indecent acts with a child. He served seven months and 16 days for his crimes.

"Cut off ears"

On August 9, 1968, a seven-man patrol led by First Lieutenant S. entered Dien Tien hamlet. "Shortly thereafter, Private First Class W. was heard to shout to an unidentified person to halt. W. fired his M-16 several times, and the victim was killed. W. then dragged the body to [the lieutenant's] location. . . . Staff Sergeant B. told W. to bring back an ear or finger if he wanted to prove himself a man. W. later went back to the body and removed both ears and a finger." W. was charged with assault and conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline; he was court-martialed and convicted, but he served no prison time. B. was found guilty of assault and was fined $50 a month for three months. S. was discharged from the army before action could be taken against him.

"Cut off heads"

On June 23, 1967, members of the 25th Infantry Division killed two enemy soldiers in combat in Binh Duong province. An army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) probe disclosed that "Staff Sergeant H. then decapitated the bodies with an axe." H. was court-martialed and found guilty of conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline. His grade was reduced, but he served no prison time.

"Taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power"

On January 10, 1968, six Green Berets in Long Hai, South Vietnam, "applied electrical torture via field telephones to the sensitive areas of the bodies of three men and one woman . . . " Four received reprimands and "Article 15s"—a nonjudicial punishment meted out by a commanding officer or officer in charge for minor offenses. A fifth refused to accept his Article 15, and no other action was taken against him. No action was taken against the sixth Green Beret.

Frontpage Interview's guest today is Bat Ye'or, the world's foremost authority on dhimmitude.

Her latest study is Islam and Dhimmitude. Where Civilizations Collide. Her forthcoming book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, will be published in January 2005.

FP: Bat Ye'or, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Bat Ye'or: Thanks for inviting me to your prestigious magazine.

FP: First things first, can you explain the term "Eurabia" to our readers?

Bat Ye'or: Eurabia represents a geo-political reality envisaged in 1973 through a system of informal alliances between, on the one hand, the nine countries of the European Community (EC)which, enlarged, became the European Union (EU) in 1992 and on the other hand, the Mediterranean Arab countries. The alliances and agreements were elaborated at the top political level of each EC country with the representative of the European Commission, and their Arab homologues with the Arab League's delegate. This system was synchronised under the roof of an association called the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) created in July 1974 in Paris. A working body composed of committees and always presided jointly by a European and an Arab delegate planned the agendas, and organized and monitored the application of the decisions.

The field of Euro-Arab collaboration covered every domain: from economy and policy to immigration. In foreign policy, it backed anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism and Israel's delegitimization; the promotion of the PLO and Arafat; a Euro-Arab associative diplomacy in international forums; and NGO collaboration. In domestic policy, the EAD established a close cooperation between the Arab and European media television, radio, journalists, publishing houses, academia, cultural centers, school textbooks, student and youth associations, tourism. Church interfaith dialogues were determinant in the development of this policy. Eurabia is therefore this strong Euro-Arab network of associations -- a comprehensive symbiosis with cooperation and partnership on policy, economy, demography and culture.

Eurabia is the future of Europe. Its driving force, the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation, was created in Paris in 1974. It now has over six hundred members -- from all major European political parties -- active in their own national parliaments, as well as in the European parliament. The creation of this body and its policy follow the 23 resolutions of the "Second International Conference in Support of the Arab Peoples", held in Cairo in January 1969. Its resolution 15 formulates the Euro-Arab policy and its all-embracing development over thirty years in European domestic and foreign policy.

It stated: "The conference decided to form special parliamentary groups, where they did not exist, and to use the parliamentary platform for promoting support of the Arab people and the Palestinian resistance." In the 1970s, pursuant to the wishes of the Cairo Conference, national groups proclaiming "Solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance and the Arab peoples" appeared throughout Europe. These groups belonged to different political families, Gaullists, extreme left or right, communists, neo-Nazis -- but they all shared the same anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism. France has been the key protagonist of this policy, ever since de Gaulle's press conference on 27 November 1967 when he presented France's cooperation with the Arab world as "the fundamental basis of our foreign policy".

FP: Is Europe's dependence on Arab oil a predominant factor in its pro-Arab policy?

Bat Ye'or: No, I don't think so. Arab leaders have to sell their oil; their people are very dependent on European economic, health and technological aid. America made this point during the oil embargo in 1973. The oil factor is a pretext to cover up a policy that emerged in France before that crisis. The policy was already conceived in the 1960s. It has strong antecedents in the French 19th century dream of governing an Arab empire and the exploitation of antisemitism to strengthen Arab Muslim-French solidarity against a demonized common enemy. Eurabia is not only a web of various agreements covering every field. It is essentially a political project for a total demographic and cultural symbiosis between Europe and the Arab world, where Israel will eventually dissolve. America would be isolated and challenged by an emerging Euro-Arab continent that is linked to the whole Muslim world and invested with tremendous political and economic power in international affairs. The policies of "multilateralism" and "soft diplomacy" express this deepening symbiosis. The Euro-Arab agreements are merely the tools for the creation of this new "continent." Eurabia is also based on the vision of Christian-Muslim reconciliation and has been strongly advocated by religious Christian bodies.

FP: For a moment, France looked like it was totally lost. But it seems to have adopted a new foreign policy, more oriented toward Europe. What is your view of this?

Bat Ye'or: France and the rest of Western Europe cannot change their policy anymore. Their future is Eurabia. Period. I don't see how they can reverse the movement they set in motion thirty years ago. Nor do Eurabians want to modify this policy. It is a project that was conceived, planned and pursued consistently through immigration policy, propaganda, church support, economic associations and aid, cultural, media and academic collaboration. Generations grew up within this political framework; they were educated and conditioned to support it and go along with it. This is the source of the strong anti-American feeling in Europe and of the paranoiac obsession with Israel, two elements that form the cornerstone of Eurabia. The new French orientation toward Europe indicates that France will work within Europe, and particularly with the new Eastern member states of the European Union, to convince them to forgo their Atlanticist vision and reorient their alliances toward the Arab Muslim world. This was French policy in the 1960s when Paris became the advocate of the Arab cause in the European Community. Until 1971, France had been isolated in the EC in its anti-Israel stance. European Community critics accused it of bias toward the Arab world. Faced with the oil crisis, the nine EC countries -- under French and German leadership -- unified their views regarding the Middle East conflict and this generated the Euro-Arab Dialogue's overall development.

FP: Tell us about the Prodi project where Tariq Ramadan and others have collaborated.

Bat Ye'or: Prodi's project is the fulfillment of Eurabia. It is called the "Dialogue between Peoples and Cultures in the Euro-Mediterranean Area."

It was requested by Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission, and accepted at the Sixth Euro-Mediterranean Conference of Foreign Affairs Ministers in Naples on 2-3 December 2003. It represents a strategy for closer Euro-Arab symbiosis to be implemented by a Foundation that will control, direct and monitor it. Last May the European ministers of foreign affairs accepted the creation of the Anna Lindh Foundation for the Dialogue of Cultures with its seat in Alexandria, Egypt. Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, murdered by an insane man, was a key advocate of the Palestinian cause and the boycott of Israel. Lindh was known for her criticism of Israeli and American policies of self-defense against terror. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was a close friend, calling her a "true European."

The Foundation will endeavor through numerous means to reinforce links of mutuality, solidarity and "togetherness" between the Northern and Southern shores of the Mediterranean, that is, Europe and the Arab countries. The authors of the project carefully avoid such characterizations since -- in the spirit of Edward Said -- they are judged anathema and racist. This is explained in the report's text, but I use them for clarification. It is the Eurabian context, representing a totally anti-American and anti-Zionist culture and policy, that explains the strong reaction against the war in Iraq -- itself integrated into the war against Islamic terrorism. A terrorism that Eurabia has denied, blaming Israel's "injustice and occupation" and America's "arrogance" instead. Eurabia has transformed Islamic terrorism into a cliche: "America is the problem" in order to consolidate the web of alliances that support its whole geostrategy.

FP: What is the significance of Solana's declaration?

Bat Ye'or: Solana is strongly implicated in the EU Arabophile and pro-Palestinian policy conducted intensively under Prodi as a European self-protective reaction to the American war against terror. If one examines the EC/EU declarations since 1977 on the Arab-Israeli conflict, one notices that they espouse Arab League decisions and positions: the 1949 armistice lines imposed on Israel, although never recognized as international boundaries; the creation on those boundaries of a Palestinian state not mentioned by UN resolution 242; the acknowledgement of the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, and of Arafat as its leader, with the obligation for Israel to negotiate exclusively with him; and initially the refusal of separate peace treaties. The EU adopted all these Arab League requests as well as repeated threats of economic and cultural boycott against Israel, constantly demanded by the Europeans' close Arab allies and their powerful lobby, the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation. On 3 March 2004, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, when asked about U.S. proposals to requested democratic reforms in Arab states, declared:

"The peace process always has to be at the center of whatever initiative is in the field. . . ­Any idea about (reform of) nations would have to be in parallel with putting a priority on the resolution of the peace process, otherwise it will be very difficult to have success." (Reuters, "Solana: Mideast peace vital for Arab reforms"; see also Neil MacFarquhar "Arab states start plan of their own Mideast", International Herald Tribune, March 4, 2004.)

Solana just repeated the opinion of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after his meeting with him. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa shared this opinion and refused to consider any reforms in Arab countries before the settlement of the Arab-Palestinian conflict¨Da settlement whose overall conditions imply Israel's destruction. Hence, any democratization and change of Arab societies demanded by the West are linked by the Arabs to its participation in Israel's demise. This link was rejected by Senior U.S. State Department official Marc Grossman when visiting Cairo on 2 March 2004. He said that the democracy plan should not depend on a settlement of the Middle East conflict. But Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, answered him:

"Egypt's position is that one of the basic obstacles to the reform process is the continuation of Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and the Arab people."

According to Reuters, Amr Moussa, speaking at the opening session of a regular ministerial meeting, declared:

"The Palestinian cause...is the key to stability or instability in the region, and this issue will continue to influence in all its elements the development of the Arab region until a just solution is reached."

Eurabian notables, whether Chirac, de Villepin, Solana, Prodi, or others, have continuously stressed the centrality of the Palestinian cause for world peace, as if more European vilification of Israel would change anything in the global jihad waged in the US, in Asia, and from Africa to Chechnya the latest horrendous tragedy in Ossetia is but one example. In such a view, Israel's very existence, not this genocidal jihadist drive, is a threat to peace. The Euro-Arab linkage of Arab/Islamic reforms to Israel's stand is spurious and only demonstrates, once more, Europe's subservience to Arab policy. Numerous Arab and Islamic Summits have imposed the centrality of their Palestinian policy on the world and requested that all political problems should be subordinated to it. The EU likewise.

FP: You often refer to a Euro-Arab Palestinian cult. What do you mean by it?

Bat Ye'or: It means precisely this Palestinian centrality that's promoted in Europe as a key to world peace. However, the Euro-Arab Palestinian cult goes much deeper than a political tool used for a Euro-Arab Partnership policy against America and Israel. It is linked to theological currents of Judeophobia and a replacement theology based on the Palestinization of the Bible and the rejection of its Jewish roots in order to delegitimize Israel's history and rights on its land. The Euro-Arab Palestinian cult symbolized the redemption of Christianity and Islam and their reconciliation on the ashes of Israel, the work of Satan -- a belief propagated by the media's continuous demonization of Israel, and Palestinian victimization. This cult brings together neo-Nazis, Judeophobes, anti-Americans, communists and jihadists. It is a revival of Nazi anti-Jewish and anti-Christian trends, particularly in its hatred of Christian Bible believers and America, the country that was determinant in the defeat of Nazism and Communism. In the 1930-40s, the Nazis had strong links with Palestinians, and those sympathies and alliances continued throughout the years after World War II, thriving in the Euro-Arab Palestinian cult that submerged Western Europe under the umbrella of the gigantic Euro-Arab Dialogue apparatus.

FP: But what does the public in Europe think about their Eurabian future? Are they aware of it? Do they go along with it?

Bat Ye'or: The public ignores this strategy, its details and functioning, but there is a strong awareness, anxiety and discontent over the current situation and particularly the antisemitic trends. This Eurabian policy, expressed in obscure wording, is conducted at the top political level and coordinated over the whole EU, spreading an anti-American and antisemitic Euro-Arab sub-culture in every social, media and cultural sector. Oriana Fallaci has given voice to this general opposition. But there are also many others. They are boycotted, sometimes fired from their jobs, victims of a type of totalitarian "correctness" imposed mainly by the academic, media and political sectors.

FP: What have you to say about the French journalists taken hostage and France's reactions?

Bat Ye'or: Chirac hoped that they would be liberated as a favor to French Arabophile and pro-Palestinian militancy, a dhimmi service for Arab policy that deserves a favor not granted to others. This tragedy has revealed France's good relations with terrorist organizations such as Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and others. It has also uncovered France's dependency on its considerable Muslim population for its home and foreign policies, as it appeared earlier that their advocacy would determine the liberation of the hostages. But the incredible conditions subsequently put by the terrorists prove that Islamist terrorists apply the same rules to all infidels. It also demonstrates the inanity of a policy of collusion and denial that has always whitewashed Islamic terrorism to avoid confronting it and has constantly transferred its evils onto its victims.

France's situation illustrates, in fact, what threatens the whole of Europe through its demographic and political integration within the Arab-Muslim world, as promoted now by the Anna Lindh Foundation. France with Belgium, Germany and perhaps Spain is ahead of the rest of Europe. Britain, Italy and to some extent the East European countries are less marked by the subservience syndrome of dhimmitude which consists in submission and compliance to Muslim policy or face jihad and death. Dhimmitude is linked to the jihad ideology and sharia rules pertaining to infidels and represents the complex historical process of Islamization of the Judeo-Christian, Buddhist, Hindu civilizations across three continents.

America has the choice of forgoing its liberty and adopting the European line of dhimmitude and supplication, or maintaining its resolve to fight the war against terrorism for freedom and for universal human rights values.

FP: John Kerry has stated repeatedly that he will 'rebuild alliances' with Europe, which he maintains President Bush has disrupted, particularly with nations such as France and Germany. Can you discuss how your scholarship on 'Eurabia' may affect the validity of this claim by Senator Kerry?

Bat Ye'or: Anti-Americanism was very popular from the late 1960s onward, when European communist and extreme-leftist parties then represented powerful political forces. It was a decisive factor in the Gaullist pursuance of a strong united Europe, and a major and essential pillar of the Euro-Arab policy and alliances in the 1970s. De Gaulle opposed Britain's participation in the European Community in 1961 and 1967 because of its Atlantic leanings. The Euro-Arab Dialogue construct, which determined the whole European policy toward the Arab-Muslim world, was basically anti-American already in the 1970s. Europe is a sinking continent and the rebuilding of alliances will be at the price of America's security and freedom.

The violent European anti-Bush trends are linked to a European internal situation. Bush's declared war on Islamic terrorism unveiled a reality carefully hidden in Europe and has exposed its extreme fragility -- a situation that was compensated by an explosion of anti-Americanism and antisemitism organized by Eurabian networks. Senator Kerry's declaration is inaccurate given the Euro-American context of cultural, political and economic rivalries preceding Bush's election, and especially the emergence of a new and complex situation that the European and American public have not yet fully understood. This is the threat of a global jihad, with its ideology, strategy and tactics, coordinated with its cells worldwide. The difference between Europe and America is that Europe denies it because it cannot nor does it wish to fight for certain values already forfeited. We see here the collision of two radically opposed strategies.

FP: Is there any optimism that we can have for Europe? How about to win this war against Islamism?

Bat Ye'or: Maybe the recent developments revealing France's failed policy and the horrendous ordeals of children and parents in Ossetia will induce Europeans to bring their politicians and media to accountability. The war against a global jihadist terrorism can be won only if the civilized world is united against barbarity. Until now European democracies supported Arafat, the initiator of jihadist terrorism, hostage-taking and Islamikazes. The war will be won if we name it, if we face it, if we recognize that it obeys specific rules of Islamic war that are not ours; and if democracies and Muslim modernists stop justifying these acts against other countries. The policy of collusion and support for terrorists in order to gain self-protection is a delusion.

FP: Bat Ye'or, thank you, our time is up. We'll see you soon.

Bat Ye'or: Thank you Jamie.

An exchange, featured at FrontPageMag.com (Sept. 15, 2004):

Chechen Solidarity at the New York Times

By Phyllis Chesler

[Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D., is the author of 12 books including Woman's Inhumanity to Woman and The New Anti-Semitism. She may be reached through her website www.phyllis-chesler.com]

The gruesome, graphic beheadings of Jews and Americans, the spectacularly simultaneous suicide airplanes, the human suicide bombers are all hard acts to follow. What can sicken, shock, and punish us even more? Al-Qaeda loyalists and other serial killers are literally dying to answer this question.

Thus, radically evil Islamist terrorists took hundreds of small children hostage, tortured them, shot some in the back as they tried to escape--and within six days the New York Times published a piece by Harvard Emeritus Professor Richard (not Daniel) Pipes ("Give the Chechens a Land of Their Own" September 9, 2004) which hastens to assure us that not all Islamist terrorists are the same, the bell did not toll for us in Beslan, that heretofore unimaginable alliances--perhaps even with Russia--may now be inevitable. Pipes explains that the Chechen terrorists are not like al-Qaeda's terrorists because the Chechen goal is not world-wide domination; they only seek the "limited objective of independence." If Russia would simply appease them by granting them a sovereign Muslim state, all will be well. He writes: "The Russians ought to learn from the French (in Algeria)" and, similarly, grant Chechnya independence.

Excuse me: Does Pipes really believe that the French "solution " to Algeria is an unmitigated success story? Tell that to the thousands of Algerian Muslim girls and women whom paramilitary Algerian Islamists have kidnapped off the streets, turned into sex and domestic slaves, then killed, often be-headed, when they become pregnant or tried to escape. Tell that to the journalists, intellectuals, and feminists whom Algerian Islamists have silenced, tortured, exiled, and murdered.

Both Franz Fanon and V.S. Naipaul understand how well the formerly colonized internalize the worst values of the colonizer. Based on my own experience in Afghanistan, I also understand that incredibly savage customs flourish freely all of which pre-date colonization : e.g. polygamy, suttee, foot-binding, the veiling and sequestration of women, female genital mutilation, stoning to death for adultery, amputation for theft, etc. Sometimes, in retrospect, colonization has improved matters somewhat in terms of hygiene, medicine, economy, and education for both genders and for the impoverished.

Based on their withdrawal from Algeria, the French have the solution to terrorism? Tell that to the French who, in Paris, Marseilles, and Lyons are living with an unruly, separatist Algerian presence that seeks to Islamize both France and Europe, veil their women, and achieve sha'ria law as a civil right. Talk to the French Jews who have been killed, threatened, and humiliated mainly by French North African Muslims-- who are using French Jews as surrogate pawns in the battle for Palestine (code word for the battle for Allah against the infidel). France's so-called "success" in Algeria did not prevent the two French journalists from being kidnapped by Islamist terrorists nor did the anti-war stance of the two Italian female humanitarian workers prevent their kidnapping.

The aim is to terrify, not communicate, the aim is to subjugate and obliterate, not to compromise.

Pipes also minimizes the nature of the centuries-old criminality of the Chechen population, a group which, even he admits, did side with Hitler against Russia. Pipes declares that the Chechens HAD to "eventually resort" to terrorism because they were, after all, "occupied" by Russia. Pipes calls Chechnya a “tiny colonial dependency" and he urges Russia to "let it go." If Russia did, would the Chechens then follow the Palestinian model and launch state-sanctioned attacks against Russia forever because Russia is not Muslim, is too western, or simply because it has "more," and is both envied and feared?

Today, occupation is viewed as far more terrible than terrorist violence; terrorists are not evil but are, "freedom fighters," "militants," "insurgents." Even the ethnic Arab Muslim Janjaweed in Sudan are called "insurgents," and "fighters," not terrorists, in the pages of the most liberal and left newspapers, the Times included. Progressive professors are condemning the U.S. State Department for having revoked Tariq Ramadan's visa to teach at Notre Dame. Meanwhile, French feminists have contacted me, frantically, to explain that Ramadan's views on women are very dangerous. For some, this is a great dilemma: Whether America should or should not grant civil rights and immigrant status to those who seek to overthrow our way of life--and who will do so by using those very rights against us.

I think we should not do so at this time. But, I also think the decision should be carefully made.

But, the greater the Islamist horror, the more certain Western intellectuals, Pipes included, want to reason with it, understand it, appease it. True, the Islamists committed beastly acts of terror against civilians but it was understandable: they were "occupied," "colonized," "humiliated," "unemployed."

By the way, did those Russian children ever "occupy" Chechnya?

No matter. Pretending to understand evil allows reason to prevail--if only as an illusion. Lance Morrow, in his excellent and beautifully written meditation about "Evil," observes that "evil" is present when children are attacked.

I agree with Richard Pipes that " compromise " is preferable. But how can the civilized world compromise with a suicide bomber or a suicide airplane? Un-doing the education that created terrorists will take 50-100 years or more as will exporting the ideas and practices of democracy and women's rights to a region and a religion that has been totally hijacked by infidel- and woman-hating killers.

One cannot "compromise" with evil. One must do battle with it.

Richard Pipes Responds:

[Richard Pipes, Professor Emeritus at Harvard, is one of the world's leading authorities on Soviet history. He is the author of 19 books, the most recent being his new autobiography Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger.]

Ms. Chesler has written an impassioned criticism of my New York Times OpEd page article of September 9, urging the Russian government to grant the Chechen's independence. Her passion is understandable because the Beslan events were, indeed, utterly revolting. But emotion tends to becloud reason which is always necessary, even when dealing with barbarities.

To begin with, let me dispute her attribution to me of the view that "Russia's 'occupation' of Chechnya somehow justifies Chechen terrorism." I try to understand Chechen terrorism and the ways of ending it: understanding is not justifying.

Secondly, Ms. Chesler in her indignation clearly has not thought out her assertion that France's action in granting Algeria independence was a failure. If it is true that France's withdrawal was followed by terror within liberated Algeria, the same can be said of nearly all ex-African colonies. Would she propose, therefore, that we re-colonize Sudan or Rwanda in order to stop the massacres? Is she advocating a revival of global imperialism?.

I nowhere "admit" that the Chechens sided "with Hitler against Russia." I merely say that Stalin accused them of collaboration and had them exiled en masse -- including children and aged people. The barbarities the Russians inflicted on the Chechens are outrageous: they include the destruction of Groznyi which has been turned into rubble and forced hundreds of thousands to flee the republic.

Granting the Chechens independence in the age of decolonization is not appeasement but righting an old wrong.

Thomas Palaima, in the Austin American-Statesman (Sept. 11, 2004):

Four years ago, I was asked to write a post-mortem on the 2000 presidential campaign. It appeared in the American-Statesman on the day after the election and was titled "The end of an uninspiring campaign." The drama of the Florida vote-count fiasco is what sticks now in most of our minds, but campaign 2004 has given me queasy feelings of déjà vu, so I checked back.

Sure enough. Unless things change, campaign 2004 will have the same effects as campaign 2000 - the rotten taste of elections run as exercises in advertising and packaging and spin; strong divisions encouraged and exploited among citizens of different political views, classes, ages, genders, sexual orientations, religions, income levels and regional backgrounds; and pandering to the selfish concerns of individual voters rather than encouraging thoughts about the common good.

This should come as no surprise, given that Karl Rove has masterminded the campaign for President Bush in both elections. Instead of exploring the real issues that should concern us, we are caught up in personality issues. Anyone remember all the senseless fuss about Al Gore's woodenness? Is President Bush really in touch with the working class because he wears an open collar, speaks English not so good and chops wood on his Crawford ranch? Is Dick Cheney really sure terrorists will attack us if John Kerry is elected?

Is single-mindedness of vision the mark of a good leader? Is it firm and unwavering determination to see policies through? Or is it a myopic inability to understand and adjust to complex and changing circumstances? Is flip-flopping a lack of commitment to values? Or is it the natural result of a 20-year career as a U.S. senator studying and voting on issues in an ever-changing world?

Back in the year 2000, I reported that David Walker, comptroller general of the United States, an appointee of Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton, had criticized both candidates for not addressing the staggering economic problems this country would face in year 2011, when the first baby boomers reach age 65.

Not only has that still not happened four years later - and conditions contributing to the economic disaster Walker predicted have only deteriorated - but we now are running a costly and bloody war - aka "mission accomplished" - with no end in sight. The annual federal deficit has hit an all-time record. Yet our conservative vice president breezily tells us not to worry. Next year's projected large addition to the deficit should not be record-setting.

What can we do? Here is my opinion, or rather that of Sam the Lion in "The Last Picture Show." We should all say firmly his true Texan words: "I've been around that trashy behavior all my life. I'm getting tired of putting up with it."

Let's accept that a candidate who attends elite Yale University and then volunteers to serve as a soldier anywhere in Vietnam is a manipulating careerist with no sense of duty. Let's accept that his later impassioned testimony before congressional hearings at a time when even the president of the United States was seeking ways of extracting us from Vietnam was cowardly and uncomradely.

Let's accept that former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes is a politically motivated liar. He does not now regret helping the other candidate, from the same educational and social milieu, avoid service in Vietnam by joining the Texas Air National Guard. And let's even accept that working stateside on a political campaign and being grounded for failure to perform routine National Guard duties showed courageous respect for the men being drafted, volunteering, serving and dying in Vietnam.

Finally, let's accept that flip-flopping with the American people about the motives for going to war in the Middle East showed honest resolve.

Let's put aside all that trashy stuff and ask the candidates and their handlers to focus on the real issues. We could start with two main sets of questions.

What is the economic picture for the next decade, factoring in the 2011 time bomb and the costs of the war in Iraq and the "unwinnable" war on terror? Where are the new jobs created by the Bush tax-cut trickle down going to come from, and what sorts of jobs will they be? How will we curtail the deficit?

What is the strategy for an "end game" in Iraq? What will the criteria be for any major commitment of troops and resources elsewhere? Will Congress have a say, or will this remain a unilateral decision of the White House?

And let's all just say no - to trashy campaigning.

Jack Rakove, in the SF Chronicle (Sept. 5, 2004):

Scholars use the term critical election to describe those contests that crystallize broad changes in the electorate, when voting blocs shift their loyalty from one party to another, new political alignments form, and one party achieves dominance over the other. There was a time, not so long ago, when Bush political adviser Karl Rove (who knows his history) was hoping that the 2004 election would prove to be critical in just this way.

It would finally cement the comfortable majority that Republicans have believed to be tantalizingly in reach since Ronald Reagan captured the presidency a quarter-century ago.

The other"Mission Accomplished" the banner on board the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln was subliminally conceived to herald was when President Bush prematurely celebrated the end of active fighting in Iraq. (And was it only chance, Michael Moore might wonder, that made a ship named Lincoln the site for this ultimate media event, linking the most recent Republican president with the party's first winner, even though the GOP's current homeland lies in the ex-Confederate states that Lincoln forced to remain in the Union?)

At this point in the campaign, Rove and other Republicans will be happy to snatch any victory they can, leaving a lasting realignment of the national electorate to another day and another candidate.

The 2004 election will still be a critical one -- but for two other reasons than those scholars invoke.

First, with less than two months to go, it seems likely to perpetuate the same bitter aftertaste that has soured our politics the past four years. That aftertaste is likely to linger longer in Washington than elsewhere in the country. An election in which the current administration narrowly retains power, or in which John Kerry captures the White House but Republicans retain control of Congress, is likely to exacerbate the pungent acrimony that permeates the national government.

There is a second, more obvious sense in which this election appears critical. Even if we recognize that no president can assure our security against the limitless threats we now confront, profound questions remain about the kind of security policy we ought to pursue in the post-Sept. 11 world we are doomed to inhabit indefinitely. This election is critical for the simple reason that it will determine who will manage the struggle against terror during the next four years.

Of course, a democratic election may not be the best means to determine which contender is better qualified to discharge this responsibility. The fact that each candidate can be portrayed in a heroic pose -- the president rallying the workers at Ground Zero, the senator on his swift boat in Vietnam -- contributes nothing to an informed choice. And if the campaign seriously addressed the likelihood that a nuclear device will be detonated in an American city in the next five years, we might all be too depressed to go to the polls anyway.

Perhaps it is better, then, that the campaign already seems to be developing its own bipolar dynamic. On the one hand, both candidates are trying to stake out basic, if rather obvious, positions on terrorism and national security. But out on the campaign trail, where their paths keep crossing, other seemingly conventional issues come to the fore: employment, the deficit, outsourcing, prescription drug benefits.

There are two basic explanations for this oscillation between the urgent and the mundane. One is that whatever color of the day homeland security czar Tom Ridge may choose, we cannot live our lives in a perpetual state of anxiety about terrorism. The desire for normalcy (that favorite word of Warren G. Harding, who succeeded a Democratic president, Woodrow Wilson, who cared too much about foreign policy) naturally reasserts itself. And so it should. Until the next catastrophe occurs and we reluctantly appoint another commission to examine our omissions, we should not be surprised that Americans remain concerned with those other forms of domestic security we traditionally know as employment, health, and education.

The second explanation, though, owes something to the peculiar way in which we elect our presidents. If our presidential elections were truly national, terrorism and the war in Iraq would be the decisive issues on which the campaign would be fought. But as we learned -- or at least were reminded four years ago -- we don't really have a national election, even for president. Instead, we have, in theory, 51 campaigns. But because the outcome in roughly two-thirds of the states is already a foregone conclusion, the contest will probably take place in a baker's dozen or so states.

At the moment, the critical states on which the election will pivot form an inverted U that circles solidly Republican Indiana and solidly Democratic Illinois. It begins in Ohio, swings north and west through Michigan and Minnesota, and heads south through Wisconsin into Iowa and Missouri. It seems inevitable that both campaigns will crisscross this region frenetically from now until the cows of Iowa come home in November. This is also the old Rust Belt, where the loss of manufacturing jobs remains a pressing issue that should give Kerry a further advantage.

In these closely divided states, issues of national security will doubtless have bite. But so will all the other concerns that the parties calculate are most likely either to turn out their supporters or sway undecided voters whose very existence leaves partisans in both parties puzzled.

Thus this campaign seems destined to have a surreal quality. The election is arguably as critical a vote as we have cast for decades -- at least since 1968, or even going back to the 1940s. ...