Author: Jonathan Schwarz

A few days ago I wondered whether Christopher Hitchens had accurately described Karl Rove as “not a believer.” The answer seems to be yes. Christopher Schipper sends along this transcript of Wayne Slater on Fresh Air last September, talking about The Architect, his book about Rove:

SLATER: You know, I remember seeing Ralph Reed in Texas when Rove tried to bring him on board back in about 1998…Ralph Reed is an Evangelical Christian who was successful in bringing Evangelical Christians around for political ends. Karl Rove is just the opposite. He is, in fact, an agnostic. He has told–he told a friend in high school that he grew up in a largely a-religious household. He told a friend at the University of Texas, where some years ago he was teaching, that he would like to be a believer but he’s an agnostic and he couldn’t be otherwise. So Rove’s approach has always been not that religion and the values of religion ought to have a place in our public policy, which is the message that he sent. Rove’s approach is that Christians are a marvelously effective voter delivery system that can be rallied, motivated, energized, and delivered for the political candidate of your choice.

GROSS: Are you confident that Karl Rove would still consider himself an agnostic?

SLATER: I know that he felt that way two years ago. I don’t know of any reason to think that he has changed that view. He certainly hasn’t told me that he has. It’s certainly possible. I think the evidence and the history is that he remains something of an agnostic, though he sees the Christians, and not just Christians but also orthodox Jews, to some extent, as a valuable voter source. With Rove, it’s about winning. With Karl Rove, it’s how can you put together a team and a constituency or a cluster of constituencies that delivers you 50 percent plus one of the vote? And that’s what it’s all about.

Thank you, world, for validating my world view!

From a new Atlantic article about Condoleezza Rice (sub. req.):

Rice and her colleagues in the administration decided to embark on a daring and risky third course: a coordinated campaign, directed with the help of the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates. While the “get tough” crew favored direct military action against Iran, the administration chose a more subtle mix of diplomatic and economic pressure, large-scale military exercises, psychological warfare, and covert operations. The bill for the covert part of this activity, which has involved funding sectarian political movements and paramilitary groups in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories, is said to amount to more than $300 million. It is being paid by Saudi Arabia and other concerned Gulf states…

Sources in the United States and the Middle East familiar with the covert side of the American-led effort to “push back” Iran…pointed to an upsurge in antigovernment guerrilla activity inside Iran, including a bomb in Zahedan, the economic center of the province of Baluchistan, that killed 11 soldiers in the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on February 14; the mysterious death of the Iranian scientist Ardashir Hosseinpour, who worked on uranium enrichment at the Isfahan nuclear facility; and the defection of a high-ranking Iranian general named Ali Asgari…

Hey, let’s ask Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, what he’s doing about these massively illegal actions that could easily lead to war…accidently or on purpose. Jay?

ROCKEFELLER: Don’t you understand the way Intelligence works? Do you think that because I’m Chairman of the Intelligence Committee that I just say I want it, and they give it to me? They control it. All of it. All of it. All the time. I only get, and my committee only gets, what they want to give me.

Oh! Sorry, I didn’t realize that as a senior U.S. senator with an $82 million personal fortune, you were completely powerless—so much so that you can’t even find out things that someone writing an article for the Atlantic can. Carry on.

Michael Klare: “Warships, Warships Everywhere, and Many a Bomb to Drop: Persian Gulf Update”

Tom Engelhardt: “Bush’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre: …Or The Clock Ticks for Thee (in Baghdad and Washington)”

As Jonathan Chait has explained in the New Republic, blogs are overflowing with propaganda. This is in contrast to the New Republic, which is interested only in pure intellectual inquiry.

This has been bouncing around the blogosphere: according to Christopher Hitchens, Karl Rove is an atheist:

Has anyone in the Bush administration confided in you about being an atheist?

HITCHENS: Well, I don’t talk that much to them—maybe people think I do. I know something which is known to few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”

I wonder if this is true? I have to be skeptical, because it fits too perfectly into my worldview.