1) Excellent column this morning by Jeff Jacoby, who takes a “New look at Bush’s 16 words.” Here’s the conclusion:

Intelligence failures are not the same thing as lies. And intelligence failures about Iraqi WMD did not begin with the Bush administration. It is worth recalling that the CIA was way off the mark in its estimates of Saddam’s chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs before the first Iraq war, too. It turned out then that Saddam was a much more dangerous WMD menace than the experts had realized. The experts then underestimated the threat. This time around, they may have overestimated the threat.

But if intelligence mistakes are inevitable, is it better to worry too much about potential threats or to worry too little? Worrying too much — if that’s what happened — resulted in the toppling of one of the planet’s most murderous tyrants. Worrying too little resulted in 9/11.

Couldn’t have said it better.

2) John O’Sullivan’s review of Sam Huntington’s book, Who Are We?, is the best written so far. (Hat tip: David Orland.) In response to critics who have pooh-poohed Huntington’s dire concerns about the negative effects of massive illegal immigration on American culture and who have labeled Huntington a racist for expressing his well-founded and reality-grounded views, O’Sullivan observes:

The final resort of critics when faced with evidence they don’t like?especially statements by irredentists claiming that the American Southwest is destined to return to Mexico?was either “well, they don’t represent anyone” (even when the speaker was the spokesman for an irredentist organization) or “well, they don’t really mean it.” There is no answer to that. Nor is any answer needed.

But the third point is more worrying. An alarming number of critics, some apparently academics, denounced Huntington’s arguments as “poisonous,” “incendiary,” “unabashed racism,” and so forth in a highly intemperate fashion, while misquoting and misunderstanding his actual arguments. Professor Bruce E. Wright of California State at Fullerton remarked that the article was an affront not only to Hispanics and Catholics (a Catholic myself, I had failed to be affronted) but also to “those of us”?such sang froid!?”whose identity is not so shallow as to be threatened by a massive invasion of others.” The Rev. Edward Lopez of New York thought that Huntington was “threatened by diversity” and “frightened by the world around him.” Patricia Seed of Rice University lamented “the arrogance of an East Coast Brahmin.” There was the usual irrelevant blather about how earlier Huntingtons had measured skulls and dismissed the potential of now successful immigrant groups. And there was a theme running through almost all of these critiques?the America of Huntington’s youth was being replaced by a better, more vibrant, and more just America, one of diversity and multiculturalism. To resist this evolution in defense of a past America was a sign of nostalgia at best, of wicked nativist racism at worst.

It is tempting to dismiss these denunciations as a cry for help. But they must be taken more seriously. After all, several letter-writers went to the lengths of arguing that Huntington’s article should not have been published and that Foreign Policy should apologize for printing it. It seems reasonable to infer that people holding such views would not willingly allow such arguments to be expressed in their churches, schools, and colleges or treat fairly any student who submitted an essay advancing them. The later anonymous Economist reviewer, who was not uncritical of the book, was nonetheless upset by these outbursts that sought, in effect, to censor the rational expression of reasonable fears. They reflect a disturbing willingness to enforce an orthodoxy on dissenters and indicate a moral atmosphere that might best be described as “soft totalitarianism”?even when, or particularly when, the orthodoxy is a minority opinion and the majority has invariably rejected any clear expression of it.

Again, I couldn’t have said it better myself (though I will try to say more about this subject at some point). Meanwhile, do take the time to read O’Sullivan’s piece in its entirety.