This review of Tim Naftali's new book appears in Commentary magazine.

The Americans, neophytes at the craft of counterespionage, learned from British intelligence how to glean the secrets of hostile forces. This early history reverberates through all that follows.

In the July/August 2005 issue of Atlantic Monthly, Caroline Elkins, author of Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya, explains the problems with following the British model of counterinsurgency. About her book, Publishers Weekly said, "Her superbly written and impassioned book deserves the widest possible readership." BBC News did a story (with video) on this in 2002.

Naftali shows how much of our blind spot about terrorism is structural. Even as we continue to pay the price, our culture resists modest protective measures like the Patriot Act.

So if you reject even these modest measures, does that make you immodest? (Last line in the Globe article: "At this point the rest of the world is prepared to believe almost anything.")

A tension has long existed between high-level government leaders and mid-level bureaucrats. The latter have more accurately perceived worrisome trends and brought them to the attention of their higher-ups, who just as regularly have ignored them.

As Kevin Hale concisely explained, "Important = Face-time". This is as true for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes as it is for Osama. Do you need evidence?

A brief diversion: what are the first two sentences to read in a news article? The lead-in and the last sentence. Consider the Osama article:

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, said Thursday that he does not believe Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar are in the central Asian country.

Visiting Washington last month, Afghan President Hamid Karzai also denied the fugitive terrorist leader was in his country. "If he were, we would catch him," he said.

You can almost hear Karzai muttering, "you idiot" under his breath. Now, back to wrap up the Naftali review:

Timothy Naftali convincingly demonstrates that, at each step of the way, more and better was possible. For that reason alone, his study should become essential reading as we chart the way forward.

Have you read it yet? What, are you clearing your summer reading schedule for that children's book? You baby. If you are going to spend time reading fiction about magic, you can at least spend it with an adult book on the subject.

Commentary - review of Blind Spot by Timothy Naftali

This is an experiment in using wiki, a relatively new form of Internet interactivity, to bring readers into the process of forming and expressing editorial opinions. "Public Beta" is just a euphemism for "We're just trying this out. Please forgive any problems and give us suggestions for improvement."

Welcome to the Los Angeles Times Wikitorial Page (Public Beta)

Sudoku is a Japanese word that, roughly translated, means "unique number." In Britain, in little more than six months, it has gone from obscurity, to fad, to mania.

The innocuous-looking logic puzzles, first introduced in November by the Times of London and then taken up by almost every other major newspaper here, are causing commuters to miss their stops and students to skip their homework.

Do Brits Love This Puzzle? Let Them Count the Ways

Tom Friedman wants Old Auto to Fail Fast. (Reread the manifesto from Isenberg and Weinberger. The parallels are striking.)

We don't need to reinvent the wheel or wait for sci-fi hydrogen fuel cells. The technologies we need for a stronger, more energy independent America are already here. The only thing we have a shortage of now are leaders with the imagination and will to move the country onto a geo-green path.

Where have we heard this before? How much time do we have left? Read the report:

As late as September 4, 2001, Richard Clarke asserted that the government had not yet made up its mind how to answer the question: "Is al Qaeda a big deal?"

A week later came the answer.

According to James Fallows, eventually we'll get the leaders we need. But what's along the path between now and then?

The story we will tell Americans begins in 2001, and it has three chapters. For public use we'll refer to them by the names of the respective administrations. But for our own purposes it will be clearer to think of the chapter titles as "Cocking the Gun," "Pulling the Trigger," and "Bleeding."

...

The two-party system had been in trouble for decades. It was rigid, polarizing, and unrepresentative. Eight years of failure from two administrations have finally blown apart the tired duopoly. The hopes of our nation are bleeding away along with our few remaining economic resources.

As Toyota Goes ...

Read your Neal, you geek!

It's not every day that Neal Stephenson writes an op-ed.

In the spring of 1977, "Star Wars" wasn't famous yet. The only people who had heard about it were what are now called geeks.

Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out

Read from the first chapter of The Opportunity. "Real World Order" is the New York Times review of the book.

It is a question of "when" and not "if" the United States will suffer from another major act of terrorism, possibly one involving a weapon of mass destruction.

With the possible exception of ten days in October 1962 when the United States and the Soviet Union nearly came to war over the introduction of Soviet missiles into Cuba, Americans and their country have never felt more insecure.

Have you read Apocalypse Soon, by Robert McNamara, in the latest issue of Foreign Policy? (I know a few of you have.)

Despite difficulties, this is a moment of rare opportunity for the United States and for the world. The United States, working with the governments of the other major powers, can still shape the course of the twenty-first century and bring about a world that is to a striking degree characterized by peace, prosperity, and freedom for most of the globe’s countries and peoples. Opportunity, though, is just that.

It could be a long boom. Or it could turn out to be an era of gradual decay, an incipient modern Dark Ages.

The Long Boom: A History of the Future, 1980 - 2020
From Dawn To Decadence, by Jacques Barzun

The 2002 National Security Strategy stated: "Today, the international community has the best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the seventeenth century to build a world where great powers compete in peace instead of continually prepare for war." It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of this development.

The End Of History?, by Francis Fukuyama

And now for a brief diversion:
Countdown to a Meltdown (excerpt)

In a new article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine, writer James Fallows examines America's economic strength and stability from the vantage point of the year 2016.

Back to Haass:

Worldwide drug trafficking meets and fuels American demand (and is indirectly responsible for a significant portion of our crime).

Do you read about The Lure of Opium Wealth?

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Maybe it is too late, but before we give up on Iraq, why not actually try to do it right?

We are fooling ourselves to think that a decent, normal, forward-looking Iraqi politics or army is going to emerge from a totally insecure environment, where you can feel safe only with your own tribe.

"Double Down" Friedman says:

TRENT (hushed tones): Double down.
MIKE (even husheder): What?!?
TRENT: Double down, baby. You gotta double down on an eleven.
MIKE: I know, but ...
TRENT: You gotta do it.
MIKE: ... but that's two hundred dollars. This is blood money ...
TRENT: If we don't look like we know what we're doing, then we may as well ...

Everyone's waiting for them.

MIKE: I know.

The dealer, the pit boss, and all the players look on as Mike drops ANOTHER BLACK CHIP in the circle with a barely audible, yet deafening, thud.

MIKE (with all the nonchalance he can muster): Double down.

A bead of sweat.

The sharp snap of a dealt card.

Let's Talk About Iraq

As the information revolution continues to influence the development of global consciousness and public participation in affairs of state, the US government must find a more appropriate balance between vigorously protecting a limited field of state secrets and fostering a culture of public accountability, transparency and openness appropriate for a networked information age.

High levels of secrecy have become a national liability in the information age. With massive amounts of relevant information on most topics now available on the Internet and elsewhere, relevance does not come from hoarding information. Instead, it comes from developing and identifying appropriate filters to sort through masses of data, and by building relationships with those, often outside of government, who have the most immediate access to relevant information.

The US government must shed all but the most critical secrecy components of its post-War architecture and institutional culture if its foreign policy institutions are to maintain their relevance in a networked world.

The Perils of Secrecy in an Information Age

I dropped in to a broadcasting school last fall and saw kids being trained for radio careers as if radio were a branch of computer processing. They had no conception of the possibility of talking into a microphone to an audience that wants to hear what you have to say. I tried to suggest what a cheat this was, but the instructor was standing next to me.

Clear Channel's brand of robotics is not the future of broadcasting. With a whole generation turning to iPod and another generation discovering satellite radio and Internet radio, the robotic formatted-music station looks like a very marginal operation indeed. Training kids to do that is like teaching typewriter repair.

Public radio is growing by leaps and bounds because it is hospitable to scholars of all stripes and to travelers who have returned from the vast, unimaginable world with stories to tell. Out here in the heartland, we live for visitors like those.

In the article, Keillor suggests a few recent stories; here's another one for you. From the June 3 episode of This American Life:

Act Two, God Said, Huh?, Julia Sweeney, a Catholic, tells the story of how her faith began to crack after reading a most alarming book ... called the Bible. Her story is excerpted from her play, "Letting Go of God," which ran in Los Angeles. (29 minutes)

Confessions of a Listener, by Garrison Keillor