Just a few brief

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Just a few brief observations. In case you missed them, this Sunday’s New York Times and Washington Post both had really good pieces on the broad question of political Islamic militancy.

In the Post, a former CIA analyst, Stanley Bedlington, examines Osama bin Laden principally as a maker of myths about himself. A lot of the stuff in the article jibes with things I’ve heard from other folks in the CIA, particularly those with experience in Afghan War in the 1980s. In any case, Bedlington weaves a lot of good information together in an incisive and probative essay.

In the Times, Joe Lelyveld talks to Muslims in Gaza, Cairo and Hamburg (Mohamed Atta’s old stomping grounds) trying to find out what makes young men (and not so young men) turn into suicide bombers. Perhaps not surprisingly it’s in Hamburg where the author finds the really frightening people, where radical Islam brushes up against the underbelly of the West, and where Islamic militancy becomes a language of discontent for the nihilism and ennui of the slums.

An interesting companion to the Lelyveld piece is this article, also from Sunday’s Times, about the aborted attack on the US Embassy in Paris.

Also of note, the one year anniversary of Talking Points Memo is hurtling toward us at a dizzying pace. This font of online wisdom and wisecracks will turn one year old on November 13th. Various festivities will be announced shortly.

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