Podcasts and Web streaming widen college radio's reach, but some stations worry about becoming too mainstream

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Turning Campus Radio on Its Head

The "better idea" consists of separating the struggle against radical Islamism from promoting democracy in the Middle East, focusing on the first struggle, and dramatically changing our tone and tactics on the democracy promotion front, at least for now.

Rapid modernization is likely to produce more short-term radicalism, not less.

This is not a trivial point.

Read that again.

Rapid modernization is likely to produce more short-term radicalism, not less.

This is not a trivial point.

Right.

The United States and its Western allies should be helping genuine, traditional and pious Muslims to reassert their dominance over a beautiful and capacious religious civilization in the face of a well-financed assault by extremist thugs.

The new NSS keeps referring to Islam as "proud", which I find incredibly galling. Hasn't the President seen Se7en?

The last thing that democracy activists need right now is more American fingerprints on outside funding.

Democracy promotion should remain an integral part of American foreign policy, but it should not be seen as a principal means of fighting terrorism. We should stigmatize and fight radical Islamism as if the social and political dysfunction of the Arab world did not exist, and we should shrewdly, quietly, patiently and with as many allies as possible promote the amelioration of that dysfunction as if the terrorist problem did not exist. It is when we mix these two issues together that we muddle our understanding of both, with the result that we neither defeat terrorism nor promote democracy but rather the reverse.

A Better Idea, By Francis Fukuyama and Adam Garfinkle

"Those will be great cultural enhancements."

It's going to be like the Great Leap Forward!

New Windows head to change culture at unit

Do we really believe that the U.S. military thinks that Russia had a spy in the middle of American war planning for Iraq or that Russia broke some American code and listened in on U.S. war preparations in 2003?

And do we really think that Secretary of State and former national security advisor Condoleezza Rice first heard of this on Friday, as she made believe she did yesterday in television interviews?

The answer to both questions is no.

Early Warning

This week, Synapse Films is re-releasing in a slightly upgraded version its edition of Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," by far the most notorious Nazi propaganda film.

On a completely different note:

It is striking in any case how filmmakers, separated by a war and an ocean, began working simultaneously on ideas that had lain fallow since the end of the silent era. Does form trump borders that content cannot cross?

New DVDs

A work of prodigious research, "Cobra II" will likely become the benchmark by which other histories of the Iraq invasion are measured.

The reviewer, Sean Naylor, is a senior investigative writer for the Army Times Publishing Company and the author of "Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda."

I recently blogged about the reviewer's book, also recommended.

'Cobra II,' by Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor

Britain recognized that an insurgency cannot be defeated, only damped down and eventually ended through a political settlement.

This hard truth has to guide efforts in Iraq, the sooner the better. And in the meantime, the more effectively the doctrine of distinction is upheld — that is, the fewer civilian casualties suffered — the quicker that reconciliation will come and the more effective it will be.

Drying Out the Insurgency

"This is making all of America say 'Why is there a law against polygamy?'"

"Viagra is not part of our culture," Linda said.

'Big Love': Real Polygamists Look at HBO Polygamists and Find Sex

"It's sad," said Esther Dyson. "The kids are growing up."

Google, Once a Maverick, Joins Lobbying Herd

Testifying at his own death-penalty trial, over the objections of his attorneys, Moussaoui said he had not known the precise date the attacks were to take place, but that he knew they would involve the White House, the World Trade Center and other targets.

He said he was supposed to head a five-man crew that also would have included Richard Reid, a British citizen who tried to set off explosives in his shoes aboard a transatlantic flight two months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Moussaoui Testifies Over Attorneys' Objections