AFRICA’S DICTATORS: THE INCREDIBLE LAMENESS OF MADE IN THE U.S.A. BUSH’S WIRETAP DEFENSE ANDREW RICE JEFFREY ROSEN WWW.TNR.COM P FEBRUARY 27, 2006 IDENTITY GOES TO WAR AMARTYA SEN THOMAS NAGEL JOSEPH BRAUDE ANNIA CIEZADLO EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MARTIN PERETZ EDITOR Peter Beinart LITERARY EDITOR Leon Wieseltier EXECUTIVE EDITOR J. Peter Scoblic A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS MANAGING EDITOR Jeremy Kahn DEPUTY EDITOR Katherine Marsh SENIOR EDITORS Jonathan Chait, Jonathan Cohn, FEBRUARY 27, 2006 WASHINGTON, D.C. ISSUE 4,754 VOLUME 234 Michelle Cottle, Michael Crowley, Franklin Foer, Ruth Franklin, John B. Judis, Lawrence F. Kaplan, Ryan Lizza, Noam Scheiber, Andrew Sullivan, James Wood, Jason Zengerle LEGAL AFFAIRS Jeffrey Rosen Cover Story: Identity Goes to War ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR Adam B. Kushner TNR ONLINE Richard Just, Editor Annia Ciezadlo 17 Beirut Dispatch: Comic Relief The “cartoon jihadists”in Lebanon Christiane Culhane, Culture Editor aren’t protesting Western blasphemy. They’re protesting Islamic FILMS Stanley Kauffmann THEATER Robert Brustein moderation. ART Jed Perl MUSIC David Hajdu DANCE Jennifer Homans Joseph Braude 19 Misled If American Muslims are generally moderate, why are their TELEVISION Lee Siegel leaders so radical? POETRY EDITOR Glyn Maxwell SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT Joshua Kurlantzick CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Amartya Sen 25 Chili and Liberty As recent events have discouragingly demon- Fouad Ajami, David A. Bell, Paul Berman, Gregg Easterbrook, Jean Bethke Elshtain, strated, diversity breeds friction, even in places that proclaim multi- Nathan Glazer, Anthony Grafton, cultural tolerance. Does multiculturalism open doors or shut them? David Grann, Robert Kagan, Michael Kinsley, Charles Krauthammer, Jeremy McCarter, Are multicultural societies supposed to protect our culture from John McWhorter, Sherwin B. Nuland, Michael B. Oren, Christopher Orr, theirs or mix our culture with theirs? A critical look at some of the David Rieff, Maggie Scarf, Ronald Steel, Cass R. Sunstein, Alan Taylor, E.V. Thaw, confusions that multiculturalism has engendered in Europe and Asia. Helen Vendler, Michael Walzer, Sean Wilentz, Alan Wolfe, Robert Wright CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Thomas Nagel 30 The Many in the One The Ethics of Identity by Kwame Anthony Jack Coughlin, David Cowles, Vint Lawrence, David Schorr Appiah; Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers by Kwame FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS Anthony Appiah Massoud Ansari, Masha Gessen, Yossi Klein Halevi, Janine Zacharia ASSOCIATE EDITOR Spencer Ackerman ART/DESIGN DIRECTION Joe Heroun, Christine Car/H2C Media EDITORIAL-CORPORATE COORDINATOR P olitics & the W orld Linda Gerth PRODUCTION DIRECTOR AND INFORMATION-TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR 4 CORRESPONDENCE The bloodiest wars, &c. Bruce Steinke PRODUCTION MANAGER Henry Riggs Peter Beinart 6 TRB | Broadcast Blues Why Iraq doesn’t make the TV news. ASSISTANT EDITORS Kara Baskin, Marisa Katz, Clay Risen The Editors 7 Slow Response Michael Chertoff says the Department of Home- ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR Steven Groopman land Security can handle natural disasters just as well as it can handle ASSISTANT TO THE LITERARY EDITOR Chloë Schama terrorism.And that’s exactly the problem. ASSISTANT POETRY EDITOR Melanie Rehak REPORTER-RESEARCHERS 8 NOTEBOOK Is hunting safer than ping-pong? &c. Rob Anderson, Alexander M. Belenky, Eve Fairbanks INTERN, TNR ONLINE Jeffrey Rosen 10 Tap Dance Alberto Gonzales’s absurd performance. Tim Fernholz Andrew Rice 12 Kampala Dispatch: Made Man Uganda’s president was once the GENERAL MANAGER Allen Chin CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Lori Fleishman Dorr model of a modern African leader.Today, he’s just another dictator ONLINE BUSINESS DIRECTOR Ari Gersen on the make.And the United States let it happen. ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER Emilie Harkin BUSINESS ASSISTANT Marjorie Powers Carol Flake Chapman 16 New Orleans Dispatch: Black Out ADVERTISING SALES & MARKETING Carnival rolls on—without the city’s African Americans. ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Richard Parker DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING, WEST Joan Stapleton Tooley Martin Peretz 38 CAMBRIDGE DIARIST | Perotists ACCOUNT DIRECTOR Julie Sturmak Kettell PUBLISHING REPRESENTATIVE Perry Janoski, Allston-Cherry, Ltd. MARKETING MANAGER Alexandra Scott TNR/ON SYMPOSIA ON PUBLIC POLICY Joan Daly B ooks & the Arts FINANCE & ADMINISTRATION ACCOUNTING MANAGER Jessie Ahn Stanley Kauffmann 24 FILMS | Dissent, Great and Small Sophie Scholl—The Final Days BUSINESS ASSISTANT Grant Loomis evokes the bravery of Nazi protestors; the Academy Awards prove to be a promotional gimmick yet again. BOARD OF DIRECTORS ROGER HERTOG, Chairman MARTIN PERETZ MICHAEL STEINHARDT Toni Bentley 33 Shutters and Shudders Lee Miller:A Life by Carolyn Burke Meghan O’Rourke 36 POEM | Anatomy of a Failure ONLINE cover photo by Updated daily. On the Web at www.tnr.com. Mian Khursheed/Reuters/Landov 4 february 27, 2006 P the new republic CORRESPONDENCE COPY RIGHT ason Zengerle is right that J candidates need more than military experience to claim credibility on secu- rity issues, but he’s wrong that Demo- crats lack a strong national security message (“Magic Bullet,” February 6). At the beginning of the 107th Con- gress, I founded, with my colleagues Representatives Adam Schiff and David Scott, the Democratic Study Group on National Security, which serves as a forum for the discussion of smart, innovative approaches to cur- rent national security issues. Working with the Study Group and others, Democrats have been light years ahead of Republicans in addressing the host of critical security challenges we face in the post–September 11 world. From finishing the job in Afghanistan to pro- viding enough troops and equipment in world” (“Divine Rights,” February 6). Iraq, Democrats were unified on many Hahn should check out the Taiping Re- issues the Bush administration got bellion in China in the middle of the wrong. And, from the creation of the nineteenth century. Estimates of casual- Department of Homeland Security to ties in that Chinese conflict range from the need for a unified international ap- 20 to 30 million. Our Civil War resulted proach to the nuclear crises in North in fewer than one million deaths. The Korea and Iran, Democrats were call- Taiping Rebellion was probably the ing for the policies Bush eventually second-bloodiest conflict in modern his- chose, long before the administration tory, exceeded only by World War II. realized Democrats were right. If only ROGER SCHMEECKLE Republicans copied us more, our brave Seattle, Washington soldiers might not be coming home to run against them. LEFT CLOUT REPRESENTATIVE STEVE ISRAEL our editorial on the leftward Member, U.S. Congress Y shift of political movements in House Armed Services Committee Venezuela, Brazil, and Bolivia (not to Washington, D.C. mention Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, and Chile) was incredibly patronizing WAR CLAIMS (“De Nada,” February 6). The neo- teven Hahn writes, “More peo- liberal economics promoted by the S ple were killed or wounded in the United States have proved a disaster Civil War than in all other American for the whole of South America, promot- wars combined. Ours was, in fact, the ing persistent income inequality, civil bloodiest war of the nineteenth-century unrest, the rape of indigenous resources, Please address letters to Correspondence, The New Republic, 1331 H Street, NW, Suite 700, Washington, D.C. 20005; letters may also be sent electronically to [email protected]. All letters should include the writer’s full name, address, and telephone number; be typed double-spaced; and be fewer than 200 words. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Please do not send letters via fax. THE NEW REPUBLIC (ISSN 0028-6583), Vol. 234, Number 7, Issue 4,754, February 27, 2006. (Printed in the United States on February 16, 2006.) Published weekly (except for combined issues dated March 20 & 27, June 5 & 12, July 10 & 17, August 14 & 21, September 11 & 18, and November 27 & December 4, 2006) at 1331 H Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20005. Telephone (202) 508-4444. 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For subscription inquiries or problems call (800) 827-1289 or visit our website at www.thenewrepublic.com. february 27, 2006 5 and environmental degradation—often with the tacit support of U.S. and West- ern multinationals. It’s all very well to say that the red line in the region should be democracy, but Western-style democ- racy is seriously discredited in impor- tant areas of the world, thanks primar- ily to U.S. policy. Hugo Chávez may be a big mouth with authoritarian tendencies—even a potential dictator—but are you offer- ing George W. Bush as a model alter- native? Don’t