National Security

Nir Rosen has been hailed by The New York Review of Books as the reporter who managed to get inside Fallujah "at a time when it was a death trap for Western reporters," and as one of the few Western reporters able to report the truth from Iraq. Still in his twenties, a freelancer who has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's Magazine, Rosen speaks Iraqi-accented Arabic and has managed to report from some of the country's most dangerous locales.

Earlier this year, Muhammad Zaki Amawi and Marwan Othman el-Hindi, Jordanianborn U.S. citizens, and Wassim I. Mazloum, a Lebanese citizen, stood in a federal district court in Ohio, accused of conspiring to wage jihad against U.S. forces in Iraq. According to the indictment against them, Amawi had flown to Jordan last August carrying laptop computers that he intended to donate to the mujahidin in Iraq. Amawi, the indictment stated, had "unsuccessfully attempted to enter Iraq to wage violent jihad, or "holy war,' against the United States and coalition forces"...

On the one hand, it reminds us of the power of cinema. It's a difficult film to watch, but it's even more difficult not to be affected by it. Yet on the other hand, "93" uses few of the tricks directors use to enhance effect. It doesn't have to -- the thing speaks for itself.

For the new movie United 93 here are three public-policy points and a plug.

First, the film puts the lie to the elaborate conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks. At their most extreme, theorists claim that bombs or missiles blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Others are willing to settle for lesser conspiracies -- that, for example, U.S. Air Force jets shot down United Airlines Flight 93.

There's a reason that most antiquated of institutions, the British royal family, manages to survive in spite of all its problems. And the reason is that it's able to regenerate itself, regaining endangered legitimacy. Proof of its regenerative capacity is found in the willingness of Prince Charles' two sons to join the British Army during wartime. Prince William, 23, and Prince Harry, 21, stepped forward to put on their country's uniform, putting themselves in harm's way. That's good news for the House of Windsor -- and provides a lesson for other would-be dynasts.

Within a decade, governments will formalise energy policy into national security policy. If war is too important to be left to generals, energy is too important to be left to free-marketeers. And America is likely to lead the way.

It's me, Carl von Clausewitz, here to speak about der Krieg -- oops, the war -- between Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the retired generals.

I ordered Herr Pinkerton to take the day off, because I know a lot about war. I wrote the book on the subject. Literally.

During the current debate over immigration, how many times have you heard someone arguing that the U.S. economy depends on low-skilled immigrant labor?

Well, don't believe those open-borders proponents -- those who argue, in effect, that the United States has to run itself like a Third World country. The vision of a rich elite ruling over a poor mob may appeal to some, but it's not the American Way.

The Bush administration's strategy regarding Iran's nuclear program is going nowhere. The U.S. demand that Iran permanently terminate even a limited capacity to enrich uranium has been categorically rejected by every Iranian political figure and group, including all the leading reformists. Given the views on the subject held by both the establishment and the mass of the population, it would be political suicide for them to do otherwise.