Air War - The Bush administration's efforts to censor a leading Arab TV station are dumb

Beirut - On Sunday, as the U.S and Britain began their long-awaited attack against Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden took to the airwaves. In a videotaped transmission he articulated a typically apocalyptic message, noting how his world was divided between believers and infidels. It was noticeable that he did so not on CNN, but on the Arab world's premier satellite channel, Qatar's Al-Jazeera.

It is not often that Arab leaders defend domestic media freedoms before their American interlocutors. However, that's exactly what occurred last week when the secretary of state, Colin Powell, asked the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, to put a lid on Al-Jazeera because of its hostility to recent U.S. actions in the region. The emir diplomatically told Powell to mind his own business.

Powell blundered. He not only ignored America's own constitutional principles, but also underestimated the station's importance to Emir Hamad. Nevertheless, Powell was right in seeing Al-Jazeera as a serious obstacle blocking U.S. efforts to win over Arab public opinion in the fight against Bin Laden and his disciples. The station has refused to toe the official U.S. line on the "War on Terrorism." It routinely hosts angry critics of U.S. Middle East policy and it plainly sympathizes with the Taliban regime.

Al-Jazeera also happens to be the most uninhibited and freewheeling Arab news outlet around. It was established five years ago by Emir Hamad, and has never looked back. In a region where television, radio, and newspapers are usually state-owned and crushingly dreary, Al-Jazeera has been a popular breath of fresh air. The station is disliked by most Arab regimes because it invites their opposition in for interviews. Its anchors see themselves as journalists rather than as government functionaries. And its discussion panels provide rare opportunities for genuine debate.

That is what has made the station's performance in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks so disappointing. A more objective Arab voice could have helped reduce the expanding cultural rift between the West and the Muslim world over U.S. policy in Afghanistan. Instead, Al-Jazeera has emerged as just another mouthpiece for Arab frustration. Though the Bush administration might benefit from listening to dissent, Al-Jazeera has had profit as well as rebellion on its mind: As the only station broadcasting from Taliban-controlled territory, its audience has soared. As a result, Al-Jazeera lately signed a lucrative agreement with CNN, granting the Atlanta-based station priority in broadcasting its footage from inside Afghanistan.

But Powell's efforts to lobby Emir Hamad exposed the worst in U.S. behavior. It was less the administration's effort to curb freedom of expression that was significant-though it certainly was-than the fact that it revealed how the U.S. feels most comfortable when dealing with Middle Eastern societies through their unaccountable despots. This has splendidly backfired on occasion, as in Iraq and Iran. However, successive administrations have continued to pursue the policy, believing that autocracy, particularly in a region awash with oil, is synonymous with predictability.

Qatar in particular has been a sporadic target of U.S. ire. In the past few years the emirate has affirmed its independence from Saudi Arabia in Gulf affairs, provoking irritation in Washington and Riyadh. Emir Hamad has also displeased the U.S. and some of its Gulf allies by staking out a role as mediator in the crisis with Iraq. On the other hand, the U.S. welcomed Qatar's efforts to develop ties with Israel several years ago -- an effort since frozen by the intifada -- which earned the emir bitter criticism in the Arab world. In this intricate ambiance, Emir Hamad has used Al-Jazeera's overt militancy as a shield protecting him from his domestic and regional antagonists.

The Bush administration would do best to adopt a different tack when dealing with Al-Jazeera. It should use the station as a means of getting its point across to an Arab public highly skeptical of whatever the U.S. does in the Middle East. It might also try to demonstrate that the attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania had nothing to do with the suffering of the Palestinian people. Al-Jazeera has proven that the Arabs are not sheep when granted legitimate forums for argument and dissension. That Powell should treat them as such by trying to hush their favorite station is not only insulting, it seems to suggest that the U.S. has no serious arguments to offer in defending its actions against Osama bin Laden.

The Occidental Tourist - Dangerous Burba-lings from OpinionJournal.com

One rarely has to wait long to enjoy those moments when blue chip publications print the worst sort of hogwash. Such was the case last week when the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal Web site published a commentary by one Elisabetta Burba, an Italian lady who, we were warned, is a journalist.

Under the title "Whooping it Up: In Beirut, even Christians celebrated the atrocity," Burba wrote of her experiences in Lebanon, where she was visiting during the homicidal September 11 attacks against New York and Washington. Her argument, as the title suggests and as she wrote, was that "the offspring of [the] great [Phoenician] civilization were celebrating a terrorist outrage. And I am not talking about destitute people. Those who were cheering belonged to the elite of the Paris of the Middle East."

One can instantly spot the usual affliction of tourists visiting Lebanon, namely a fondness for obsolete clichés. Perhaps Burba hadn’t heard, but a 15-year war and over 100,000 deaths pretty much did in Beirut’s "Paris of the Middle East" reputation. But there is much more in her essay: In addition to the clichés, there is flimsy evidence, reliance on hearsay, and awe-inspiring laziness.

First, flimsy evidence. Our journalist has just heard news of the U.S. attacks: "[We] went into an America-style café in the Hamra district…rated as one of the most expensive shopping streets in the world…The café’s sophisticated clientele was celebrating, laughing, cheering and making jokes, as waiters served hamburgers and Diet Pepsi. Nobody looked shocked or moved. They were excited, very excited."

Forget for the moment that Burba’s guidebook prose merely recycles the pre-civil war description of a no-longer-opulent Hamra. It is her insistence that people were rejoicing at the attacks that is especially unconvincing. Couldn’t it be that they were laughing for some other reason? Burba doesn’t speak Arabic, so she wouldn’t know. Did failing to silently grieve for the U.S. victims mean the café’s patrons endorsed their collective murder? Alas, people, as Burba’s subsequent sightseeing in Lebanon showed, do go on functioning as before.

Then there is hearsay. Burba has a tendency to believe whatever she’s told, particularly when it squares with her preconceptions. Still reeling from her traumatic encounter with the happy throngs in Hamra, she asks "some moderate Arabs" if those approving of the attacks are a minority. The person answering spoke for many, Burba supinely explains, when he remarked: "Ninety percent of the Arab world believes that Americans got what they deserved."

But the high point of Burba’s laziness comes one evening when she is "in the Christian northern part of Beirut [and hears] some loud noises." Ever the intrepid reporter, Burba asks what the sounds are. Someone responds: "Probably they are celebrating the attacks." Burba is dumbfounded: "You mean the Maronite Christians are also celebrating?" "Yes," comes the answer, "they also feel betrayed by the Americans." Burba, naturally, swallows this hook, line, and sinker.

How both passages got by Opinion Journal's editors is astonishing. This isn’t news. It’s not even propaganda. What we have here is the chambermaid exchanging gossip with the milkman. One need not even bother picking the passages apart, they are so poor, their assumptions so shaky, the author’s gullibility, or bad faith, so pervasive. But then Burba’s article is a veritable forest of such commentary. One can devote an evening listing her errors, and invite friends in to participate.

At this stage, two warnings are in order. The point here is not to target a dreadful piece of writing, nor even chastise Opinion Journal for publishing something so simplistic, but to engage in self-defense. There is a sincere belief in the U.S. that the Lebanese were fully behind the air attacks. When the attitude in Washington is "You are against us if you are not with us," irresponsible pieces like Burba’s are downright dangerous.

There is also the matter of distributing collective responsibility. Undoubtedly, there were people in Lebanon happy with the mass murders in Washington and New York. There were even a few in the U.S. who applauded them -- and that's not even including such serial cretins as Jerry Falwell, who interpreted the attacks as divine intervention to punish the extravagances of sinful Americans. However, extending such alleged approval to Lebanese society as a whole is not only a no-no in serious journalism, it is factually wrong.

Many Lebanese watched with horror what took place on September 11, and they did so because many of them knew, or feared they knew, people in and around the World Trade Center. There were ceremonies in Beirut to honor the victims, and the U.S. embassy welcomed many people presenting their condolences. There are countless Lebanese living in the U.S., and countless others here who await -- and who will now have to wait for much longer -- a chance to follow them.

I assume that Burba knew she wouldn’t have much of a story if she described the nuances in Lebanese reaction to the attacks. She knew Opinion Journal would likely not run a piece that banally argued how divided an Arab society could be over the horrendous loss of life in the U.S.

Good for you Signora Burba. Though you used fraudulent means, you sold your piece. Bravissima!

Glory Days for Government

As Operation Infinite Justice gets underway, the war drums are beating across the land and a battle will surely come, although we know neither when nor what particular form it will take. Only this much is certain: Though our government didn't bring on last week's terrorist attacks and everyone in Washington would certainly give plenty for them not to have occurred, war is a great friend of the state. In such troubled times, people look to the federal government for action and assurance. To get predictions about what we might expect to happen this time around, I checked in with economic historian Robert Higgs, whose book Crisis And Leviathan (1987) insightfully chronicled how national crises in the 20th century consistently helped grow the size and scope of our federal government. Higgs is a senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute and editor of the institute's quarterly journal, The Independent Review.

Robert Higgs: In a nutshell, it's that when a crisis of major significance occurs--something as large-scale and pervasive as the Great Depression or the World Wars--there's an overwhelming public demand for government to act. In the 20th century, every national emergency has seen federal government take unprecedented action to somehow allay the perceived threat to our security. These actions have taken a great many forms, but the common denominator is that they all entail the increased exercise of power by government over society and the economy. When the crisis ends, many of the emergency actions cease. But not all of them. Each emergency ratchets up the size and scope of the federal government. In some cases, agencies that had a very strict relation to the emergency transform to take on new missions.

REASON: What's an example of an agency that transformed itself?

Higgs: The War Finance Corporation in World War I was created to provide funds for various munitions enterprises. When the war ended, the War Finance Corporation turned to financing agricultural cooperatives and the export of agricultural products to Europe. It lived on until 1925. In 1932, it was revived to bail out railroads and other big companies that were going bankrupt during the Great Depression. During World War II, it was used for a multitude of new missions, including building new defense plants and stockpiling defense materials. When it was finally abolished in the 1950s because of scandals, it was immediately recreated in part as the Small Business Administration, which itself has taken on a variety of tasks over time.

REASON: Are the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon a large enough crisis to feed Leviathan?

Higgs: It's a big enough perceived emergency to cause the government to extend into areas it may not have moved into so quickly, particularly surveillance of ordinary citizens and ordinary locations where people might congregate for business or recreational purposes.

REASON: Is it appropriate for individuals to worry about government expanding at this time?

Higgs: It's extremely appropriate because historically, a large proportion of all government expansion has taken place as an emergency or crisis action. It's precisely under conditions such as those that exist at present that we ought to worry the most about the expansion of government.

REASON: What ought we to look for this time?

Higgs: We can expect thousands of reservists to be called to active duty and taken away from their ordinary jobs. We can expect the assignment of military forces to some unprecedented duties. It appears that some military units are going to be used for domestic police activities. It is clearly going to be the case that the FBI will become far more active in surveillance activities. The government will mount a variety of overseas actions requiring the armed forces, and perhaps a number of civilian employees, to attempt to kill, to disable, or to damage what are taken to be terrorist camps, facilities, or cadres. It is also fairly clear that the government is going to have to bail out the airline industry and maybe the insurance industry. When the government takes large-scale, unprecedented actions of this sort, unanticipated consequences always occur. Then the government has to expand even further to deal with those consequences.

REASON: Civil liberties always take a beating in war. Do the restrictions recede after wars are over?

Higgs: The civil liberties violations during the World Wars were, for the most part, abandoned after the wars, but not entirely. But they left institutional residues and changes in public attitudes and outlooks that could be exploited afterward. For example, it's pretty clear that World War I hysteria directed at the Germans was later directed at individuals caught up in the so-called Red Scare. People were already in a high state of excitement about "un-Americanism." That was instrumental in the ability of the government to persecute, deport, and otherwise harm a number of foreigners who were in the country at that time. The FBI expanded during World War II. After the war, FBI activities were often directed at dissident political factions, especially in the 1960s. Wars have increased state power both directly and indirectly. I've been talking about fairly direct ways in which the government changed opinions and institutions to enable it to do new things after a crisis ended. But a very important way in which both World Wars enlarged the power of government was through the effect on government budgets. We can see that same effect operating now. Governments at war spend much more money than they otherwise would. In doing so, normal constraints on government spending are broken--particularly people's attitudes about the importance of balancing the budget or belief that no more than x dollars ought to be spent for a certain purpose. Both World Wars caused the size of government relative to Gross Domestic Product to take a jump up and there was never retrenchment to the relative levels before the wars. We see something similar in the current episode. Until recently, there was a great deal of political struggle over not spending the supposed Social Security surplus. As soon as the crisis burst forth, that concern evaporated. Congress gave the president twice as much money as he asked for when he went in for an emergency appropriation. That is pretty much in character with past crises. Fiscal constraints break down very quickly in the face of perceived emergency conditions.

REASON: What's the nature of the coming crisis?

Higgs: The whole concept of wiping out terrorism is completely misguided. It simply can't be done. Terrorism is a simple act for any determined adult to perpetrate no matter what kind of security measures are taken. I suspect that after the government finishes making its show [of force] in the next few weeks, it will only inspire new acts of terrorism--if not immediately, then eventually. If the government was really serious about diminishing the amount of effective terrorist acts, it would set about creating a global corps of truly unsavory informants on the ground. But it's never shown in the past that it's had the wit to do that. I don't expect it to have the wit to do it this time. I expect to see a lot of huffing and puffing, calling up troops, dropping bombs and missiles, and maybe this time even sending in special forces for attacks on one group or another. But this is all politics. It's not going to make a dent in the genuine threat of terrorism.

REASON: What do you expect in terms of Leviathan at the end of the day?

Higgs: The ultimate result will be an enlargement of the Big Brother state. We were moving that way already. This will accelerate it.

What's the Message? - Deciphering terrorist actions that have no clear political objectives

Beirut -- The first images from the Middle East following the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks showed Palestinian refugees exulting. However, assuming a Middle East angle to the attacks, there was a more compelling story from the region than what was, for all its crudeness, celebration by a defeated people for a perceived victory against an uncaring foe. The story was that the perpetrators of the attacks offered the U.S. no obvious message as regards its activities in the Middle East.

Particularly since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has had to face frequent and contradictory accusations that it meddles excessively in international affairs, and that it doesn't meddle enough. This paradoxical reaction has been at the heart of Arab displeasure with the Bush administration in recent months. Many Arabs have openly criticized what they deemed overbearing U.S. behavior in the region, particularly towards Iraq, while also demanding a new administration initiative to resolve the ongoing war between Palestinians and Israelis.

This paradox can be easily explained away by the Arabs' desire to see what they consider a more balanced U.S. attitude towards the Palestinians. However, it leads to an absurdity in the case of the airline attacks -- particularly regarding the explanation that they were designed to protest U.S. policy in the Middle East. Arab states may be appalled at U.S. unconcern, but the attackers were in no way demanding greater U.S. involvement in the region. Indeed, exactly the opposite was the case. That was why the U.S. was left deciphering actions that had no clear political objectives.

This alone differentiated Tuesday's hijackings from those organized by Palestinian organizations in the late 1960s and '70s, or militant Islamic movements in the 1980s. The earlier operations were carried out to secure the release of prisoners, earn ransoms, or enhance the political influence of the perpetrators. Their architects not only sought well-defined ends, but also usually were more than eager to identify themselves.

The airline attacks are far more difficult to read. They seem to have no explicit aim, though that did not mean they had no aim whatsoever: The U.S. was humiliated, the president was, for several hours, barred from his own capital and compelled to flee to the security of a Nebraska bunker. The World Trade Center's twin towers and the Pentagon -- bywords for U.S. economic and military might -- were literally demolished. And nightmares of U.S. vulnerability, reminiscent of the science fiction films of the 1950s (themselves representations of the Communist threat), became real.

Still, what this meant for the Middle East was ambiguous. The Bush administration must not only retaliate against an enemy it does not really know, it must interpret actions that make little political sense -- beyond a desire to maximize death and destruction. That's because the likely U.S. responses can only further anger those behind the attacks. The U.S. will, initially at least, reinforce its relationship with Israel; and might, ultimately, be encouraged to return in force to the region to help solve a Palestinian-Israeli conflict dangerously augmenting Arab antipathy towards the U.S.

The ultimate crime is the one committed for no reason. When an act cannot be explained it is infinitely more menacing. What then of a crime sending contradictory messages? The Bush administration finds itself in a quandary in the Middle East, but doesn't know which policy to adopt in order to reduce its risk. More involvement or less? Which should it be? The attackers wouldn't say.

Literary Legislators - In praise of partisan writers

Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, by Christopher Hitchens, London: Verso, 358 pages, $25

Christopher Hitchens' recently published indictment of Henry Kissinger rather too quickly overshadowed his Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, a collection of literary essays produced over the past eight years. This was ironic, if only because Hitchens has so often mocked the former secretary of state's propensity for attracting publicity. Hitchens has sought, like George Orwell, to turn political writing into an art, his starting point being "a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice." In Unacknowledged Legislation, however, his aim is primarily to reveal the politics in literature.

Three things stand out when reading Hitchens' essays. The first is his attitude toward public intellectuals, the "unacknowledged legislators" of Shelley's In Defense of Poetry. Hitchens also invites reflection on the ecumenism of literature--good literature--that seems to water down the "feeling of partisanship" that so pervades his writings. There is, finally, something to be said of the Hitchens style, which can be characterized as relentless provocationthough within disciplined boundariesand bold willingness to attack others on their own terrain.

For Hitchens' insights into the duties of public intellectuals, turn to a forum on the subject that ran in the February 12 edition of The Nation. There Hitchens stated: "I've increasingly become convinced that in order to be any kind of a public-intellectual commentator or combatant, one has to be unafraid of the charges of elitism. One has to have, actually, more and more contempt for public opinion and for the way in which it's constructed and aggregated, and polled and played back and manufactured and manipulated."

In an essay on H.L. Mencken titled "Critic of the Booboisie," Hitchens goes further, arguing: "Populism, which is in the last instance always an illiberal style, may come tricked out as folkish emancipation." Hitchens cites Murray Kempton and Gore Vidal as examples of "radical critics," a more partisan characterization than "public-intellectual commentator or combatant."

The reference to Vidal, in particular, is revealing. Hitchens' respect for Vidal runs deep and the two share several similarities (beyond the fact that they call Washington, D.C., their "hometown "). Though considered luminaries of the left, both have mostly classical bearings, and are more comfortable with the game of ideas and the attractions of style than with the dictates of ideology-an ideology of both left and right that tends to exalt "the public." As Unacknowledged Legislation continually makes clear, Hitchens has a rather quaint notion that the public intellectual represents a vanguard of sorts. "The sword, as we have reason to know, is often much mightier than the pen. However, there are things that pens can do, and swords cannot."

Hitchens is of course right about that. And a good case can be made that most great literary or artistic works were produced by individuals who were out of step with their environment. Where Hitchens is less convincing, however, is in so sternly positing an antagonism between the public intellectual and public opinion. The effective intellectual, even the radical, can also be the one who manages, while daring to be different, to discern and express what the public's opinion really is. For example, we may assume that in their moments of greatest relevance, Vaclav Havel, Boris Pasternak, or Richard Wright, "combatants" all, expressed what their peoples wanted to say but could not.

Hitchens might not disagree with this, inasmuch as it supposes that the credible intellectual is especially sensitive to the public's consciousness. But this raises a second problem: What allows us to accept that "intellectuals" have any greater feeling for the Truth than anyone else? Obviously some do and others don't, but what criteria permit the anointing of an amorphous assemblage of gatekeepers? Hitchens argues that populism has become the "vernacular for elitism." Perhaps in some circles it has. However, it is not particularly clear, on the basis of Hitchens' guidelines, what differentiates "acceptable" intellectual elitism from the elitism public intellectuals are supposed to combat.

A third problem is that Hitchens, who rightly assumes the public can be easily gulled, underestimates its aptitude for indifference--at least toward public intellectuals. Often there is simply no discord between the public and intellectuals, faute de combattants. Public intellectuals in much of the developed world-including the more luminous members of Hitchens' literary pantheon-often seem to interest a relatively small number of people. On top of this, much of the public is armed with a technology that allows it to circumvent gatekeepers when defining taste, style, quality, and social merit. It is not so much that public intellectuals are unacknowledged--which they are-but that they are incapable of legislating anymore.

But not to kill the beast too soon: What of the ecumenism of good literature, which gains its resonance in, and must provoke, contradictory sensations? Those in search of an answer will find few pens sharper than Hitchens'. The reason is that he invariably allows art to transcend dogma in his writings. That may sound like a cliche, but one apparently not so readily embraced by Hitchens' political comrades. Propping up a favorite straw man, former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, Hitchens writes that "Podhoretz is accidentally right, as it happens, in maintaining that there is...a special ad hominem venom on the Left, and an extreme willingness to attribute the very lowest motives to those who transgress its codes." Thus speaks the unmade friend of Sidney Blumenthal-Hitchens was famously set upon by the left after he accused the former Clinton administration strategist of being deceitful on behalf of the president.

Art for Money's Sake - Hollywood's uneasy relationship with the almighty dollar

Next time you see a film produced by the contemporary corporate progeny of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, be sure to read the Latin phrase above the roaring lion's head: ars gratia artis -- translated as "art for art's sake." This enduring manifestation of Hollywood kitsch -- what you can't understand must be classy -- is all the more exotic in that MGM always made its films for money's sake. And yet the phrase reveals a peculiar tendency of film executives, both past and present, to inject respectability into their mainly mercenary ventures by claiming artistry and good taste.

Taste and commerce have long had a difficult relationship. No cultural High Mass reveals this better than the annual Academy Awards ceremony, in which a small coterie of Hollywood film people congratulates, mostly, a small coterie of Hollywood film people. Every year one hears the customary moaning that it is the expensive productions that win the awards, while the smaller, independently produced films are left picking up, at best, soon-forgotten Oscar nominations. The implicit assumption is that commerce undermines art, so the pocket-sized films shot on paltry budgets by directors whose names no one can pronounce are good, while ostentatious super-productions are vulgarity incarnate.

Obviously the problem is elsewhere. A mountain of money won't save a badly scripted, indifferently directed film. Nor can hell be quite as well approximated as that tranquil, intimate oeuvre by the hot new Manhattan-based Mongolian director who refuses to sell out to Hollywood by cutting down his six-hour meditation on yaks to a mere four hours. Yet as Salman Rushdie suggested recently in the New York Times, a crop of new and popular international films, most notably Ang Lee's "shoestring" $15 million epic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, might take U.S. viewers back to the days when they could "accept subtitled foreign films in the giant cineplexes where the big money is made." Crouching Tiger, which took home an Oscar for best foreign film, has certainly made big money: The film has already grossed well over $100 million in American theaters and is still going strong.

What Rushdie implied was that the public would go for taste. Indeed, but just how the public defines what is tasteful, and through what means, has changed considerably over time. Gone are the days when critics and intellectual gatekeepers had an overpowering influence over the public's artistic preferences. Part of the reason is that such figures no longer have a commanding hold on status; in the case of movies, nobody really cares what latter-day Pauline Kaels and Bosley Crowthers have to say. At a time of Internet and satellite communications -- in other words, in an age of choice -- the public can easily circumvent tastemakers, deal directly with like-minded consumers, and set down subjective guidelines for what they like and dislike in films and other art forms.

Which brings us back to commerce and art. While Crouching Tiger was indeed fine fare, its success had nothing to do with its purported similarity to the art-house films favored by the critics decades ago. Its success came from Lee's ability to read what the market demanded and to fulfill this demand by crafting a Kung Fu fantasy that abided by the infallible rules of commercially successful popular narratives. That he did so while managing to leave behind a piece of himself was all the more commendable. In the end, the public enjoyed Crouching Tiger instinctively, not according to supposedly objective artistic criteria set down by critics who spent several years hacking through impenetrable Amazonian lianas of film theory.

But is that enough? Commerce and art have in fact often been complementary. For example, the creative genius of Renaissance art, despite the aesthetically weighed spin critics have deployed to explain it, was primarily the result of an expansion in commerce that made art consumers (then mostly the upper crust) wealthy and eager to own a larger number of more varied paintings. This, in turn, prompted painters to innovate in order to compete for customers, with success bringing wealth and social status. As historian Lisa Jardine has noted, a Renaissance painter's reputation did not rest "on some intrinsic criteria of intellectual worth," but on market appeal. (See "Buying Into Culture," June 1998.)

So the market can produce quality, but isn't there something irritating, some will protest, in the arrogant way with which Hollywood carries itself? Isn't there something indecent in those astronomical film budgets that provide individual movie stars with more money than most of us could hope to steal in several lifetimes? The first comment is irrelevant, since success belies irritation, while the second is misguided, since the market is impatient with morality. The fact is that Hollywood, for all its flamboyance, is remarkably democratic: If the public doesn't like a film, it avoids watching it. Nor are film budgets in the U.S. paid out of the public's pocket, as they often are in other supposedly more enlightened countries. If Julia Roberts can pout her way to fortune, then it means that she can bring in a great deal more money than the fees she demands.

It is forgotten that Hollywood became what it is, or was, because it had vast reserves of money to throw around. The old studio system was extravagant, but it allowed Hollywood to collect a farrago of the finest directors and actors ever. It was also -- as profitable undertakings inevitably are -- ecumenical in its voracity, importing regiments of talented foreigners, from Jean Renoir to Alfred Hitchcock to Greta Garbo to Luis Bunuel to Fritz Lang to, well, Ang Lee -- the list is endless. Commerce brought these people to the U.S., allowing them to make great films and bad. Money and competition made them ever more innovative. It was art for money's sake. Or better still, money for art's sake.

Powell Play - Smart sanctions, stupid policy?

Colin Powell chose the Middle East as the first place to alight as Secretary of State, and it was no coincidence. That's because the secretary had Washington on his mind, and his perambulations were mainly aimed at imposing his agenda on a Bush administration whose Middle East policy is still ill-defined and potentially malleable.

However, if the past weeks are any indication, what lies ahead is pandemonium. When first taking office, Powell remarked that the United States would deal with the Middle East in its "totality." What he meant was that there would be less attention reserved for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement (which Bill Clinton helped undermine by pushing too hard too soon). Recently, the State Department broke all ties to the past when it announced that the expression "peace process" had been dropped from its lexicon -- an admission of rhetorical, and so political, loss of control over the Arab-Israeli negotiations.

The administration's minimalism on negotiations has been accompanied by a consensus to focus on Iraq. But the harmony within the Bush White House ends there. On the one side there is Powell who wants to pressure Iraq but also spare the U.S. growing censure for a sanctions policy that is seen as unreasonably open-ended and cruel. Powell's favored alternative is to introduce so-called smart sanctions, which would prevent the importation mainly of military material into Iraq. The idea is to lessen the burden on Iraqi civilians while targeting Saddam Hussein's weapons programs and security apparatus.

On the other side is Vice President Dick Cheney, and his ally and former patron, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is assisted by Paul Wolfowitz. All three men regard sanctions as less important than overthrowing Saddam. The best way to do so, they feel, is for the U.S. to amply fund and militarily assist the opposition Iraqi National Congress, thereby reversing the debacle of 1996, when desultory U.S. backing for the INC allowed Saddam to expel the group from northern Iraq.

Here's the crux of the problem: Powell doesn't believe in the INC, and yet it is the State Department that disburses congressional funds to the Iraqi opposition. Money may become an issue elsewhere, too. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz know that a "smart sanctions" regime may in time lead to the abolition of "no-fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq. The Pentagon could lose billions of dollars available to patrol the zones -- $1.4 billion for the southern zone alone in FY 2000 -- and an attendant loss of influence over Iraq policy.

Bureaucratic skirmishing often conceals latent alliances. Since being president of Halliburton, Cheney has been especially sympathetic to the oil interests. Powell concurs, and both men realize that the U.S. absorbs some 60 percent to 70 percent of Iraqi oil exports. So if there is a compromise to be worked out on Iraq between the different Washington factions, oil may provide the impetus. But before then, Powell will have to clear up several glaring ambiguities.

The first is that he will have to square overexertion in Iraq with minimalism on the Palestinian-Israeli track. Powell needs the Arabs to back his "smart sanctions" stratagem. While most Arab regimes like the idea of less pressure on the Iraqi people, they are reluctant to help the U.S. because they believe Washington is acquiescing in the killing of Palestinians by Israelis. Powell has not found a way out of the dilemma. His only solution may be to reinvolve the U.S. in the details of the Arab-Israeli negotiations, something he has vowed not to do.

A second problem is Iran. Powell cannot fully implement "smart sanctions" without somehow bringing the Iranians in on the arrangement. Recently, the head of State's policy planning staff, Richard Haass, proposed a dialogue between the U.S. and a Tehran-based Shia Iraqi opposition group. The idea was that the U.S. might support the movement's activities in southern Iraq. Haass could be trying to pay off the Iranians to ease them into informally implementing "smart sanctions." However, selling a pro-Iranian movement in Washington could also be suicide.

A third problem is that the sanctions on Iraq are eroding daily. Powell will have a rough time convincing Saddam's neighbors that "smart sanctions" are worth implementing. Everything about the current sanctions regime encourages Iraq's neighbors to benefit from the illegal transit trade. Powell's Washington rivals will be delighted to see him fumble as he tries to corral the Syrians, Jordanians, Turks, and others into a compact most couldn't care less about. If he fails, the hardliners will be on hand to push ever more aggressively for Saddam's ouster.

In administration disputes, a frequent method of compromise is to simultaneously run diametrically opposed policies. There's a good chance the U.S. may end up backing both "smart sanctions" and a regime change. This will mean confusion and more, not less U.S. involvement in the region. Who knows? It could be time for George W. Bush to read up a bit and weigh in on his Middle East priorities.