Katrina vanden Heuvel, Jane Hamsher, Juan Cole, Gore Vidal, Robert Greenwald, Matt Stoller and others headline a letter to be delivered to Barack Obama before the Democratic National Convention. To some degree, the letter appeals to Obama to be Obama, the one we saw during the primary and not some faded or compromised version.
Some think former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle may be a dark horse to be Barack Obama’s vice presidential running mate. Most of the rest of the DC chattering class thinks that Daschle will be Obama’s White House chief of staff. Both fine jobs.
Richard Holbrooke triggers incredible passion, some of it negative, among foreign policy professionals. He’s a Democrat, but many don’t understand why he’s not a Republican. Dems, some argue, are supposed to be about achieving moral goods in the world along purist pathways of good behavior and enlightened intentions.
(Peter Bergen is a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation).
(Yosri Fouda is the Chief Investigative Correspondent and Former London Bureau Chief for Al-Jazeera). This is also true. But there is a difference between ‘select’ and ‘invent’. Atta, who in my opinion epitomizes the heart of a very frustrated Arab/Muslim street, was already there for the taking.
(Peter Bergen is a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation). I agree with much of Yosri’s post. But Bin Laden selected Atta to run the 9/11 operation. This is what effective leaders do. Select the right people to carry out their plans.
(Yosri Fouda is the Chief Investigative Correspondent and Former London Bureau Chief for Al-Jazeera). Though I would largely agree with Peter as to the importance of bin Laden’s figure, I would not say that without him “9/11 would have been one of many harebrained schemes in the head of KSM.