Neither the usually acute Tim Grieve or Bill Keller mentioned a previous case in which the Times in 1961 at Kennedy's request refrained from publishing an article on preparations for what became the Bay of Pigs invasion. Had it done so, there would have been public debate about US policy toward Castro, the debacle might have been avoided, and perhaps US relations with Cuba might have taken a different course. Those who argue that empire and democracy are incompatible certainly have not been refuted by yet another instance of the way in which editors and publishers and journalists in critical cases capitulate to the claims of government that "national security" (an infinitely expanding category) is at stake. Perhaps if Sulzberger, Keller and their colleagues spent some time reading the arguments of the opposition to empire---quite well represented in our universities

and represented in the Congress by some interesting voices---

they might take a different view of their duties to the public. If the very notion seems far fetched, it is----but that raises interesting questions about the processes of thought control in the nation which, absurdly, purports to instruct others in democracy.

Juan Cole is, as usual, entirely acute. A large problem remains. Set aside the leaders of the organized Jewish community in the US and their dubious contribution to Jewish history, the conversion of their imnage of the Jewish state into an idol. Many US Jews, enjoying the rights of universal standards of citizenship in our nation (not yet erased by the Israel lobby's ally, the Fundamentalist church grouping with its insistence on a Christian nation), are unrerlective supporters of the idea and practise of an ethnic state in the Mideast. True, it is a long way away and their own children are not in the Israel armed forces but at professional schools in the US. How can one explain the idealized picture of Israel in American Jewish consciousness? Reform Judaism, led by the admirable Rabbi Eric Yoffie, has moved away from this to a plane of political and moral realism that makes one able to think of Jewishness positively---but many US Jews are as primitve as that Italo-American leader from California who warned Hillary Clinton that if she voted against Alito, she would not be forgiven. Try to talk with many Jews about this, and one is met with alternsating charges of "anti-Semitism" or (for their Jewish interlocutors) "Jewish self hatred." Apparently--I infer this from Bush's recent denunication of the view that Israel is somehow responsible for the war in Iraq-- this is indeed contributing to anti-Israel views in a segment of the public and may in the end revive American anti-Semitism, perhaps more virulently than ever. The Jewish majority, however, is as impervious to the reality of its own situation as was the Sharon described by Cole. The unthinking drive to confront Iran next will only accentuate these problems. Enlightenment, definitely, has its limits. Norman Birnbaum

One difficulty is that Ms. Howell (if I may draw upon my 53 years in the classroom) has all the marks of a C+ student, a certain dutifulness, the lack of capacity to make necessary distinctions, and a pervasive conventionality of mind. No doubt, a worthy person---but

perhaps she is miscast in a difficult assignment. Norman Birnbaum

With respect to empire, we remain a largely one party state. Our world political illusions may well require a series of catastrophes before they are replaced by a more rational estimate of our national possibilities. That much said, even an excellent journalist like Walter Shapiro seems to prefer quasi-ironic distance to ---- let us say--systematically asking those so enthusiastic about our army about their military records.

It is journalistic discretion, one sidedly exercised, which allows the Klaghorn Congresspersons and desktop heroes of the research centers (and of the Democratic Party's rhetorically ferocious special forces in Washington foreign policy operations) to engage in their entirely vicarious heroism. Thoswe of us who pay a bit of attention to what the outside world thinks of this (one only has to ask, Mr. Shapiro, your colleagues from the foreign media and an indiscreet diplomat or two) know how repugnant others find it. It is repugant, indeed: one is reminded of Orwell, who came from the lower margins of the British gentry and had his reasons for scepticism (he could not go to Cambridge or Oxford because he could not afford it), but who praised the British upper class because in a fight, they sent their sons. Norman Birnbaum