Secretary of State Changes from Protestant to Catholic

It appears that Colin Powell claims to be Episcopalian, or at least that's what one bio says. It was difficult to find a bio that lists his religion; so, it's probably not something he likes to talk about. Condi Rice comes from a Protestant background in Alabama, where her father was a Presbyterian minister, but in Colorado she attended a Catholic high school, St. Mary's Academy, and later Notre Dame University, as well as the nonsectarian University of Denver, according to the Denver Post. Powell's Episcopalian leanings indicate tolerance, as opposed to the rabid, hate-filled, born-again evangelicals in Bush's base. Rice's rejection of her Presbyterian upbringing seems to indicate that she shares the rigid, intolerant views that caused many conservative Catholic voters to vote against their fellow Catholic Kerry because of his views on abortion and other "moral" issues.

The ironic thing is that except for its Protestant north, Europe is mostly Catholic. Yet, because the Catholic Europeans are liberal (as opposed to the Catholic church itself), the Conservative Republicans hate them venomously, especially the French. Who would have thought that Henry VIII would be responsible for such a big difference in US foreign policy?

Safire Resigns from New York Times Column

In yet another resignation, William Safire is stepping down from writing his political column in the New York Times. Apparently he will be replaced. In the meantime, there will be no shortage of Jewish NYT columnists, including Tom Friedman and David Brooks. But, that's fine with me, because neither of them seems to be so wedded to the Zionist wing of Judaism as Safire. Safire's columns often read to me as if they had been dictated from Tel Aviv or the Knesset in Jerusalem.

Tom Friedman Points Out Void in US Foreign Policy

Tom Friedman's column in Sunday's New York Times, written before Colin Powell's resignation, points out why Powell would have been important had he stayed on. Friedman wrote:

• If only President Bush called in Colin Powell and said: "Colin, neither of us have much to show by way of diplomacy for the last four years. I want you to get on an airplane and go out to the Middle East. I want you to sit down with Israelis and Palestinians and forge a framework for a secure Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and progress toward a secure peace in the West Bank, and I don't want you to come back home until you've got that. Only this time I will stand with you.
• "As long as you're out there, I will not let Rummy or Cheney fire any more arrows into your back. So get going. It's time for you to stop sulking over at Foggy Bottom and time for me to make a psychological breakthrough with the Arab world that can also help us succeed in Iraq - by making it easier for Arabs and Muslims to stand with us. I don't want to see you back here until you've put our words into deeds."

One key phrase in this fictional dialogue is, "Only this time I will stand with you." It's not going to happen now. So, who's going to bring peace in the Middle East? Paul Wolfowitz? I don't think so. Bush is keeping his evangelical Christians and Zionist Jews for whom hatred is a way of life, and his moderates are jumping ship, or being pushed over the side.

CIA Officials Resign, Professionalism Dead

The Washington Post reported on Monday that the two senior CIA officials, one of whom I knew, resigned on Monday. I imagine that Powell's resignation was the final nail in the coffin, if there needed to be one. The Administration may not like the CIA, but it needs somebody who knows how it works. Apparently Goss thinks he knows enough from his service in the CIA a generation ago, or from his outsider-looking-in position in the House, to re-invent the CIA. It's a pretty big risk.

Of course, there might be some threat from terrorists, and it might be useful to know what's going on behind the scenes in Iraq, or Iran, or North Korea, or a few other places. You can argue that the intelligence from these places wasn't very good under the old regime, although amazingly George Tenet left with little but praise from his boss. It appears that Tenet was brilliant, but was ill-served by everyone working for him.

I'm still not convinced that the "war" on terrorism is more like the war in Iraq or Vietnam than like the war on drugs or poverty. The war in Iraq is related to the "war" on terrorism mainly because of the hatred it has fomented against the US in the Muslim world. The number of foreign fighters killed in Falluja compared to the number of Iraqi fighters will give some indication of the importance of Iraq in killing terrorists. The more foreigners killed, the more successful the Iraq war is as part of the "war" on terrorism.

In any case, the CIA, like State, now goes to the ideologues. Will all of America's foreign policy now be as misguided as its Iraq policy has been?