I know it rankles a lot of people, because no one is in a very forgiving mood these days (please write in with any counter-examples; I will gladly take back my words), but in America, if you make a mistake, you can (in most cases) apologize—”I made an error in judgment”—recant, seek forgiveness, and move on.

Unless you’re Hillary Clinton, there’s always a good chance, for example, that people will simply forget who you are and what you did, never mind why it was considered anathema (or, for that matter, fabulous. By the time Deep Throat’s identity was finally revealed, more people seemed to care about the impact on Bob Woodward and the WaPo, scooped by Vanity Fair[!], than about the resolution of this 30-year-old mystery).

Upshot:

If you want to have a great reveal,

do it before your fans keel

over.

Dead.

—Hepzeeba Smith, “Infotainment Rule #14,” 2007

But I digress. What I wanted to say was this:
In Iran, as opposed to the forgiving U.S. and A., there are no mistakes or errors in judgment. There are only “incorrect perceptions of reality.” And they have consequences:

The biggest treachery of an analyst or a decision-maker to oneself is that he/she may not see the reality the way it is but instead tries to filter or interpret the information related to the operational environment based on his/her own presumptions, beliefs, feelings, intentions and interests. Incorrect perception of the reality derails the decision-maker, whether an individual or a system, toward a wrong path, thus endangering his/her survival.

Now, those are people who really know the meaning of party discipline.

Douglas Farah reports on an uptick in media offerings from al Qaeda, which, like everyone else these days, has to struggle to remain relevant in a merciless 24/7 media environment and with an audience that has the attention span of a flea:

This past week has been interesting for the sudden re-emergence of the high-profile al Qaeda/salafist propaganda machine, showing a broad range of Islamist actions to demonstrate the movement is alive and well, and triumph is inevitable.

We get the publishing [of] a slick web zine, the “Voice of Jihad,” after a two-year hiatus, including directions from Osama bin Laden to attack oil facilities; a Zawahiri interview blasting Bush for fairly current events; the release of videos by al Qaeda in Afghanistan, supposedly showing attacks on Coalition forces; and, as Evan Kohlmann finds new video releases by Al Qaeda in Iraq, including the biographies of foreign troops killed there.

As Farah notes, al Qaeda is focused on media. These recent propaganda efforts are impressive compared to previous grainy videos from the group. This speaks to the group’s determination to communicate and spread its message globally. Which it has so far done quite successfully:

Much of what is said in this recent spate is entirely propaganda, but it cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. It shows those who visit the jihadi sites that the Islamist movement is alive and well, capable of delivering messages and combating the enemy on a sustained basis.

Then Farah veers into my favorite topic—message creation.***

Any insurgent group, fighting in an asymmetrical context for the long term, has to develop a narrative to justify itself, comfort its often-beleaguered members and attract new members. …

In this case the narrative is that Islam is on the rise, the West is in retreat, and that Allah has already granted victory to the faithful. All that is lacking are more willing recruits.

And this is where we move into the counterterrorism territory suggested by both anthropologist David Kilcullen and “Enlightenment fundamentalist” Aayan Hirsi Alik, who have both said that potential jihadis must be turned away by appealing alternatives before they sign on to the extremists’ seductive agenda.
Farah writes:

What must be developed is the counter-narrative, one that resonates, explains the weaknesses and defeats, and can help drive away new recruits.

It is hard, but not impossible. Multiple insurgencies have faced, and suffered from, effective counter-narratives that were culturally appropriate and accessible to the right population.

It is not clear we have a counter-narrative, in part because we still do not agree 1) one who the enemy is and 2) that we really are in a war.

The last point is depressing but true. I want to know more about the counter-narratives Farah is talking about. And I wish I could see evidence that others were paying attention to this subject, of paramount importance.

Meanwhile, tomorrow’s NYTimes leads with a story that says reports of al Qaeda’s death have been greatly exaggerated:

Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.

In light of their recent calls on followers to hit oil installations across the world and to be sure to film their actions, I think it’s safe to say they want to put on a really good show.

——–

*** I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Frank Rich (among many others) is wasting his brain cells developing new crackpot conspiracy theories to explain the behavior of Bush & Co.  Today, for example, he writes:

Let’s not forget that the White House’s stunt of repackaging old, fear-inducing news for public consumption has a long track record. Its reason for doing so is always the same: to distract the public from reality that runs counter to the White House’s political interests.

I wish these brilliant analysts would spend just a fraction of their time deconstructing the other characters populating the world stage—you know, the ones who are causing real trouble for us. We need a guide to understanding their behavior, too.

As not-Hepzeeba, I look before leaping. As a blogger, I often publish first and read the opinions of others later.

So, an update: It seems that Hillary sticking to her guns is a popular subject. Hitchens is less charitable than I toward her, and also (as always) shrewder. He observes that she really has no choice:

After speaking to the U.N. General Assembly meeting of 2006, President Jalal Talabani of Iraq found himself in a room with President Bush and former President Clinton. He embraced them both. “Thank you,” he said to Clinton, “for signing the law that called for the liberation of Iraq. And thank you, Mr. Bush, for being the one to implement it.” To rat on this would be one thing if you were, say, a Dennis Kucinich fan who had opposed all engagement with Iraq from the beginning. …
At stake, then, is not just the credibility of an ambitious New York senator who wants to be the next President Clinton. At stake, rather, is the integrity of the last President Clinton and of those in his administration who concluded that coexistence with Saddam Hussein was neither desirable nor possible. If the subject was less important, it might be amusing to watch Hillary Clinton trying to “triangulate” her way out of this and find a way of impugning the Bush policy that did not also impugn her husband’s own consistent strategy. But the thing cannot be done and can’t really even be attempted without raising the suspicion that a major candidate for the office of the presidency is, on the main issue of the day, not just highly unprincipled but also completely unserious.

That’s my first criterion for a presidential candidate, because a president’s job is to lead, not to follow.

(If this is too simplistic for you, choose another blog to read, or ignore my occasional posts about politics. Also: remember the oft-repeated caveat that I am not a politico. As an American, I am, however, an interested party.)

So anyway: the longer Hillary Rodham Clinton refuses to apologize for her Iraq- war authorization vote (see this piece in the NYT), the longer she refuses to call it a mistake, the firmer she stands on this, the more appealing she becomes to me.

Sorry, Kos. And sorry, Frank Luntz and Soledad O’Brien:

S. O’BRIEN: You know, you talk about Hillary Clinton. Let me ask you a question about that.

There are people who keep saying, without nuance, was your vote for the war a mistake? You know, and you’ve heard that over and over and over again. And every time she answers that question, she will not use the word “mistake”. She says, “If I knew then what I know now, I would not have voted.”

Is that splitting hairs? Is it going to matter, do you think, to her campaign?

LUNTZ: It does matter. If I were her adviser, I would tell her that the most human thing you possibly can do is to say those two words, either “I’m sorry” or “I apologize”.

To acknowledge that you’ve made a mistake is to say that “I’m human.” And for Senator Clinton, the key to her presentation is not that she doesn’t know the issues, because clearly she does. It’s whether she has emotion and passion, as well as the intellect.

For her to acknowledge that she has erred in a vote says to the American people that she understands the anger and frustration that you hear on the Democratic side of the political spectrum. I don’t know why she doesn’t acknowledge it. She will. Mark my words — I’ll say it on your show for the first time — she will admit that she made a mistake within the next 30 days.

S. O’BRIEN: Frank, I’ve got to tell you, I believe you, because I have said those same words, but not on camera. But just to myself.

At this point (did I say how ridiculously early it is?), I am the deeply skeptical voter she’s aiming for, and she’s reaching me [cue applause in the Clinton war room]:

[Y]esterday morning Mrs. Clinton rolled out a new response to those demanding contrition: She said she was willing to lose support from voters rather than make an apology she did not believe in.“If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from,” Mrs. Clinton told an audience in Dover, N.H. ….

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers have been split for some time about whether she would be better off if she apologized for the vote. Mark Penn, her chief strategist, who was also Mr. Clinton’s pollster, carries considerable influence within the campaign, and he agrees with her that she should keep the “mistake” onus on Mr. Bush and turn her attention to finding “the right end” to the war, as she says.

Foreign policy advisers say they have made similar arguments: look to the future, not the past, and stand by a vote that was based on military intelligence that was widely accepted at the time. [e.a.]

The campaign faction that was more comfortable with an apology included advisers with war-room instincts who wanted to deal proactively with the attacks that would come. [You can't call something like this vote a "mistake" and just move on. We're talking about war. --ed.] Yet they were torn, too. They argued that she should talk about the future, yet also deal decisively with her 2002 vote — either by saying it was wrong, or acknowledging that others saw it as wrong, or making a speech on Iraq.

Mrs. Clinton’s belief in executive power and authority is another factor weighing against an apology, advisers said.

Indeed, I can’t find the link right now, but I remember the thrust of her comments when she voted for authorization—that she remembered from her husband’s time in the White House how very important executive power can be (or words to that effect). It was an eminently sensible comment; it was well reasoned, and it came from experience. Why would she ever want to go back and second-guess her judgment, which was correct at the time (unless she now believes her own judgment was faulty, which she clearly does not)?
The Times continues:

As a candidate, Mrs. Clinton likes to think and formulate ideas as if she were president — her “responsibility gene,” she has called it. In that vein, she believes that a president usually deserves the benefit of the doubt from Congress on matters of executive authority.

From my point of view, she is being both consistent and principled. Regardless of what has happened in Iraq in the meantime (which is Bush’s fault), her vote was not a mistake at the time she cast it. It was not war authorization that got us into this mess; it was non-existent war (and post-war) planning. Clinton did not exercise poor judgment in authorizing the president to go to war (because she cannot have known that Saddam didn’t have WMD [[everyone in her husband's administration thought he did]] or that the administration would make such a hash of things).

Therefore, there is no reason for her to say her vote was a mistake … unless you buy the lazy, boring, monotonous conventional-wisdom biens-pensant arguments that Bush lied about WMD to get us into “the wrong war at the the wrong time for the wrong reasons”—i.e., in order to wage a successful war and ride triumphantly back into the White House in 2004. Which is, to use Bush’s word from the other day, “preposterous.” But which just about every “liberal” and every pundit on television professes to believe. And now the anti-war Dems want Hillary to go along with that?

You have got to be kidding me. She’s running for president. Of the United States. It is likely that she will be running against Mr. 9/11. Or, if not, then against Mr. Hanoi Hilton. Or some other Republican hard-ass.

Please, people. Think. To just apologize because it looks good is stupid in this case. We’re talking about voters, not about Oprah’s television audience.

I understand that the strongest voices in the party right now are anti-war and that there is a (big) price to pay for not going along to get along. But this is shortsighted. Besides: anti-war Dems are exaggerating their own importance and influence. The country is not happy with the war in Iraq—that’s for sure. But there’s a big difference between being unhappy with the war and being anti-war.

In ProgressiveLand, being anti-war is a lifestyle choice and a self-image, a fervent hope and a wish, perhaps a deeply held conviction or even a prayer. In the real world, it is not a serious political position.

Which is not to say that the rest of us are pro-war. Not me. I hate war. I am sick to my stomach that war has found us. Arthur Sulzberger sounded like a dope when he told a graduating class that “it wasn’t supposed to be like this,” but I know what he meant. Because it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

But it is like this. War has found us. We can’t just surrender. We have to rise to the challenge.