With the news of Crown Prince Abdullah’s formal accession to de jure as well as de facto power in Saudi Arabia on the death of long-incapacitated King Fahd, I should mention I’ve been struggling my way through Stephen Schwartz’s 2002 history and polemic about Wahhabism (the harsh Sunni faction in charge in Saudi Arabia, with important links to al Qaeda), The Two Faces of Islam.It’s been a struggle for two reasons. The first is that Schwartz’s book begins with a full and sometimes idiosyncratic history of Islam in order to frame his indictment of Wahhabism as a betrayal of “traditional” Muslim faith. And the second is that the author’s fury at the Saudi Royal Family leads him into some murky waters, such as an extended defense of the Shi’a theocracy of Iran.I supposed I’ve also mistrusted Schwartz’s account because the primary outlets for his views have been American conservative magazines, particularly The Weekly Standard and National Review. But that hasn’t kept him from denouncing the Bush administration’s ties to the Saudi regime; he particularly seems to detest Dick Cheney as a virtual agent of Riyadh.In any event, Schwartz’s otherwise baleful view of Saudi policies softens a bit when he talks about Abdullah, whom he views as a potentially decisive figure in reigning in the activities of Wahhabi clerics at home and abroad. And here’s what Schwartz has to say today:

Abdullah himself has long been rumored to detest Wahhabism, which he considers dangerous for Islamic and Arab unity. In a surprising development, Crown Prince Abdullah appeared at the funeral of Syed Mohamed Alawi Al-Maliki, a non-Wahhabi cleric, late last year, praising al-Maliki for his devotion to Islam and to the welfare of the nation. Al-Maliki, a devotee of Sufism as well as a leading Sunni jurist, had previously suffered heavy repression under the Riyadh authorities.

Abdullah is 81 years old; the next three princes in the succession are Defence Minister Sultan, Interior Minister Nayef, and Riyadh governor Salman, all “conservatives” according to Guardian correspondent Brian Whitaker, and all, according to Schwartz’s book, part of a Royal Family faction with close ties to Wahhabi clerics.If Abdullah’s the one to truly institutionalize genuine reforms in Saudi Arabia, he needs to get a move on.

I know I was kinda busy last week, but still, it was no excuse for missing the news that the Global War On Terrorism was officially ended by the Bush administration. No, they didn’t unveil a “Mission Accomplished” banner on an aircraft carrier; they simply let it be known that GWOT would henceforth be replaced by the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism, or GSAVE. Why the startling change? Eric Schmitt and Tom Shanker of the New York Times explain it as follows:

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Press Club on Monday that he had “objected to the use of the term ‘war on terrorism’ before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution.” He said the threat instead should be defined as violent extremists, with the recognition that “terror is the method they use.”Although the military is heavily engaged in the mission now, he said, future efforts require “all instruments of our national power, all instruments of the international communities’ national power.” The solution is “more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military,” he concluded.

There are two rather obvious comments to make about Myers’ explanation. First, isn’t it fairly well established that wars are prevented, begun, waged, won and lost through non-military as well as military means? And second, hasn’t the use of “all instruments of national power” and “all instruments of the international communities’ national power” been appropriate all along, and certainly since 9/11?Indeed, Myers’ line of reasoning might have come in pretty handy before the Pentagon decided to invade Iraq without a post-Saddam plan for the country, and before the White House decided to let DoD supervise the political and economic reconstruction effort.Indeed, the richest passage in the Times report is a graph about the deep thinking that went into the change of terminology:

Administration and Pentagon officials say the revamped campaign has grown out of meetings of President Bush’s senior national security advisers that began in January, and it reflects the evolution in Mr. Bush’s own thinking nearly four years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

It’s probably going to come as a deep shock to Bush’s conservative base of support that his “thinking” is subject to “evolution,” and I don’t mean just those who support scientific creationism. After all, his entire re-election effort was based on marketing him as an unshakable Man of Resolve, as opposed to the dangerously reflective John Kerry. And speaking of Kerry, Matt Yglesias over at TAPPED rightly points out that the same people responsible for suddenly declaring We’re Not At War savaged Bush’s Democratic opponent for allegedly failing to understand that it was all about the military use of force.These are the people, of course, who never admit mistakes on either side of a flip-flop. But it’s going to take a lot of revisionist history to pull this one off. Matt also notes that GWOT is a term in constant use all over the Pentagon website. I’ll go him one better: it may take a supplemental defense appropriations bill to rewrite the millions of pages of DoD documents that stipulate GWOT as the long-term underpinning of every aspect of national security policy.

In the last couple of weeks, there have been big developments on redistricting reform in three states: California, Ohio and Colorado.In Calfornia, a state judge tossed a Schwarzenneger-backed redistricting initiative off the ballot for a November special election. A federal district judge stayed the order pending a hearing, but it doesn’t look good for the much-hyped but (IMHO) flawed proposal, which mainly relies on a procedural mechanism of turning redistricting over to a panel of retired judges, without much in the way of new guidelines for map-drawing. Ah-nold has been negotiating with Assembly Democrats on a plan to displace the initiative with a legislatively sponsored reform plan, but there hasn’t been much news about that of late.In Ohio, a group of good-government groups and (mostly Democratic) legislators are conducting a frantic and potentially successful petition drive (which must succeed by August 1) to get a package of three initiatives on the November 2005 ballot that includes a redistricting reform plan, along with a campaign finance reform effort and a provision seeking to de-politicize Ohio’s highly suspect election administration system. The redistricting initiative is interesting: in sharp contrast to California’s initiative, it places a very high premium on competitive districts (while respecting Voting Rights Act considerations), and essentially solicits a variety of plans that will be rated according to the extent that they create the maximum number of competitive congressional and state legislative districts, while ensuring overall partisan balance statewide. The package of reforms in Ohio is being fueled by widespread public disgust with the ongoing and ever-escalating news of scandals implicating the state’s entrenched Republican leaders in the executive and legislative branches.And in Colorado, a three-judge federal panel yesterday rejected a suit by Republicans to reinstate a 2001 re-redistricting of congressional districts by what was then a GOP-controlled legislature. And though I haven’t been able to find the opinion yet, it sounds like the judges expressed more than a little contempt for the Republicans’ argument that their First Amendment rights were violated when a court drew an earlier map after the legislature failed to enact a plan, triggering a state constitutional ban on re-redistricting.Meanwhile, down in Florida, my informants say the effort there to get a package of redistricting reforms on the November 2006 ballot is rolling along nicely on a wave of positive newspaper editorial endorsements and a solid petition drive, led by former Education Secretary and Senate candidate Betty Castor. As in Ohio, the Florida reforms would take place immediately upon enactment. And if you recall that Florida and Ohio represent two of the five states (the others being Pennsylvania, Michigan, and thanks to the Great Texas Power Grab of 2003, the Lone Star State) whose peculiar map-drawing has had a lot to do with GOP control of the U.S. House, this is good news on both small-d and big-D democratic grounds.

The big news today was from Northern Ireland, where the Irish Republican Army announced it was abandoning its “armed struggle” to end British rule, and called on its members to scrap their weapons.Specifically, the IRA issued an order to “dump arms.” Nicholas Watt explained the symbolism of that wording in the Guardian:

Eamon de Valera, the father of modern day Irish republicanism, would probably allow himself a wry smile. More than 80 years after the Irish civil war, the IRA today echoed his famous declaration of 1923 when it ordered all units “to dump arms”.With his impeccable republican lineage, Gerry Adams will have known the huge symbolic importance of using the exact words of the hardliners who refused to accept the partition of Ireland in 1921.

De Valera, of course, ultimately won power for his Fianna Fail Party through the ballot box. And that’s what Adams is predicting for his own Sinn Fein, which could gain partial power through coalition governments in both Dublin and Belfast within the very near future.Whether or not that happens, it will be very difficult for the IRA to renege on this announcement or turn back to violence in the immediate future, especially if it redeems its pledge to allow independent verification of its disarmament. And that’s what makes this moment even more significant than the 1998 Good Friday Accord that ended The Troubles.For most of my adult lifetime, the violence in Northern Ireland ranked with the Cold War and the Israeli-Palestinian impasse as interminable battles that would apparently extend infinitely into the future. If today’s news from Ireland doesn’t prove illusory, then we’re two-thirds of the way towards the end of these endless struggles.

As some of you may have heard, there’s a big assault underway on the DLC in certain precincts of the blogosphere. And here’s my response: Whatever, Nothingburger, De Nada, Yawn, Zen Zen, and above all, Who Cares?If you want to know what the DLC is about, go to our web page, read the big speeches our leaders gave on Monday, and decide for yourself whether this organization is focused on criticizing and providing an alternative to Bushism, or arguing with other Democrats. I think it’s pretty clear. But just so you know, I’m not going to go there in the blogospheric argument about the DLC. It’s not real, it’s surreal; and the Bush administration is providing enough surreal estate in politics and policy to satisfy our imaginations in perpetuity.

I won’t do a full post on the Monday session of the DLC’s National Conversation in Columbus until the transcripts and video of the major speeches are up on our web page, so I can link to them and you can figure out if I’m spinning or truth-telling. But I will offer a few quick observations. And you can check out some of the media reports on the event here.I guess the most notable common threads at the event were: (a) a very sharp and often angry critique of the Bush administration and the GOP; (b) a sense of agreement that security, opportunity, values and reform are the four big issues where Democrats ought to focus their work and their message; and (c) a concern that Democrats must soon begin to offer positive alternatives to the Republicans so that their pain will produce our gains (which isn’t much happening yet, according to most polls). Evan Bayh, generally considered a national security hawk, offered a truly acidic critique of the administration’s handling of the war on terror, concluding: “That’s not strength, that’s incompetence.”Tom Vilsack systematically decimated the GOP’s fidelity to values, especially that of community. Hillary Clinton squarely accused Republicans of trying to return the country to the policies and political practices of the 19th century. And Mark Warner scorned the Bushies for choosing to intervene in the medical decisions of the Schiavo family while choosing to do nothing about the 45 million Americans without health insurance. But the same speakers consistently warned that Democrats can’t simply offer negative critiques or counter-polarize, even if that makes unity a bit easier. Bayh described the need for positive alternatives as a party responsibility to the country. Vilsack suggested it’s the only way to truly contrast Democratic with Republican values. And Clinton argued that we need to remind voters Democrats did govern the country in a vastly better manner in the 1990s, and can do it again. I can tell you authoritatively that the DLC did not script these speeches at all. Their consistency on both the positive and negative aspects of the Democratic message are mainly attributable to objective reality, and the common conclusions that smart and principled pols tend to reach from their different perspectives. It’s a very good signpost for our political future.

This weekend the DLC National Conversation (our annual meeting) got under way in Columbus, Ohio. Today’s public session, featuring speeches by Hillary Clinton, Tom Vilsack (our new chairman), Evan Bayh, Mark Warner, and Tom Carper, will undoubtedly get some serious national press, but in some respects, the heart of the meeting was yesterday, when we held 22 workshops on a variety of policy and political topics. We knew there would be more than 300 state and local elected officials here from more than forty states, but the interesting thing was that every one of them seemed to show up for a full menu of three workshops. I moderated three of them. The first, on “values and frames” (a discussion of the Lackoffian theory of message development, and others, including our own) had to be moved to an auditorium after about 80 people showed up. The second, on Religion and Politics, was SRO. And even in the shank of the afternoon, we had a full room for a discussion of that wonkiest of political topics, election reform and redistricting reform. And best as I could tell, every other workshop was pretty much sold-out as well. These folks (about half of whom were attending their first DLC national event) are hungry to learn and win.Those folks who think of the DLC as an inside-the-beltway organization of old white guys would probably have been surprised by the sheer number of state and local attendees, and their diversity in terms of race and gender (about half the attendees were women). Even ideologically, I think we drew a fairly representative cross-section of state and local Democratic elected officials. The tone of most sessions, though infused with a sense of urgency, was upbeat. There was no talk of litmus tests or purges (please take note, Kos), and as usual with these events, a lot of networking and best-practices exchanges in small gatherings between the formal meetings. We were picketed by a local activist group called the Spine Project which pretty much shows up at every Democratic gathering in Ohio to express their displeasure at the Party’s failure to challenge the presidential outcome in this state. But it was reasonably friendly. All in all, the vibes have been good, and I expect that to continue today.

Well, I’ve been horribly remiss in posting, but being as how I’m supposedly on vacation, have been involved heavily in preparations for the DLC’s annual meeting, and am getting dragged into a discussion of Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas on the TPMCafe site, I’m not exactly violating the Protestant Work Ethic or anything.At any rate, I wanted to say a word about a new book that’s recently gotten a couple of major reviews, in the New York Times and in The New Republic: Fred Siegel’s Prince of the City, which is ostensibly a biography of Rudy Guiuliani. I say “ostensibly,” because Fred Siegel’s take on Rudy is really a take on New York’s peculiar political culture in the distant and recent past. And it’s a take worth reading and absorbing in detail.By way of full disclosure, I should mention that Fred’s a friend and mentor of mine, and the most remarkable polymath I have ever known. For years I used to play “stump Fred” by asking him questions about any and every conceivable topic of social, political, literary, and even sports history, and never found a subject he didn’t know a lot about. His particular area of expertise is American urban history, and he brings the full weight of his knowledge to bear on that subject in Prince of the City.Both the reviews I linked to above treat Fred’s book as a lionization of Guiliani. But I disagree. While he has a lot of positive things to say about Rudy’s initial assault on New York’s entrenched problems and powers, and later, about Hizzoner’s famous apotheosis on and after 9/11, I think the book’s theme is essentially tragic: by the end of his two terms in office, Guiliani was beginning to succumb to the same temptations of fiscal profligacy and interest-group tending as his predecessors. And he was succeeded by a Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, who exhibited the same vices without many of Rudy’s virtues. Fred’s a lifelong Democrat, if often a heretical Democrat, and I think the most important message of his book is about how a city with a 4-1 Democratic registration margin has voted three straight times for Republican mayors, and if current polls are any indication, may do so again later this year. It takes a lot of Democratic dysfunction to make that happen, even if the beneficiary is a man with so many progressive impulses as Rudy, and especially if it’s Mike Bloomberg. Prince of the City is, more than anything else, a matchless cautionary tale for Democrats everywhere.

Well, after an extended campaign of indirection, George W. Bush tonight named D.C. Court of Appeals Judge John Roberts as his nominee to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.It’s an interesting choice, politically and philosophically. Roberts obviously doesn’t get any diversity points, particularly since he would replace one of the two women on the Court. He’s not, by general assent, a crazy person; liberal legal analyst Jeffrey Rosen has categorized him as a “principled conservative,” free of “Constitution-in-Exile” hubris. But Rosen was evaluating him as a replacement for Rehnquist, not O’Connor; it’s likely Roberts would move the Court to the Right.On abortion, Roberts’ record is unclear. Yes, as Deputy Solicitor General under Bush 41, he wrote a brief in an abortion case that in passing referenced the administration’s support for reversing Roe v. Wade. But that was his job as a lawyer representing his client, and is not a reliable indicator of his position as a Supreme Court Justice. Conservatives tonight seem happy with the appointment, but Democrats should let things sift for a while before taking a definitive position. Without question, the confirmation hearings could produce some questions and answers that might either discomfit the Cultural Right or create legitimate concerns for everybody else.

This week &c, the New Republic’s blog, is performing an extremely important public service: a weeklong tutorial on the Darfur genocide by Eric Reeves of Smith College, one of the best U.S. experts on the subject.It’s easy to forget about Darfur, given the grindingly consistent if murky bad news, the lack of interest in official circles much of anywhere, and the usual crypto-racist impulses many people have to write it off as just another African massacre. But I strongly urge you to stick with Reeves’ posts all week. If enough Americans do that, then maybe Darfur will become something more than a third-tier issue in U.S. and world politics.