Op-Ed

AUSTIN -- With all due respect, of course, and God Bless America too, has anyone considered the possibility that the attorney general is becoming unhinged?

Poor John Ashcroft is under a lot of strain here. Is it possible his mind has started to give under the weight of responsibility, what with having to stop terrorism between innings against doctors trying to help the dying in Oregon and California? Why not take a Valium, sir, and go track down some nice domestic nut with access to anthrax, OK?

Not content with the noxious USA PATRIOT bill (for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act -- urp), which was bad enough, Ashcroft has steadily moved from bad to worse. Now he wants to bring back FBI surveillance of domestic religious and political groups.

And now, a news dispatch from the Media Twilight Zone...

WASHINGTON -- There were unconfirmed reports yesterday that the United States is not the center of the world.

The White House had no immediate comment on the reports, which set off a firestorm of controversy in the nation's capital.

Speaking on background, a high-ranking official at the State Department discounted the possibility that the reports would turn out to be true. "If that were the case," he said, "don't you think we would have known about it a long time ago?"

On Capitol Hill, leaders of both parties were quick to rebut the assertion. "That certain news organizations would run with such a poorly sourced and obviously slanted story tells us that the liberal media are still up to their old tricks, despite the current crisis," a GOP lawmaker fumed. A prominent Democrat, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said that classified briefings to congressional intelligence panels had disproved such claims long ago.

AUSTIN -- Now is no time to quit worrying. Keep up that nail-biting, team. Foreign policy is like chess: It's necessary to think at least three or four moves ahead. According to The New York Times, the Pakistanis are deeply unhappy with us. They don't trust the Northern Alliance worth squat. Unhappy Pakistanis may strike you as no skin off your nose, but the problem is that Gen. Pervez Musharraf is not firmly in the saddle, as it were.

Since he took over in a coup, his support base is the military, and the Pakistani Army has a lot of Islamic hard-liners. Bush told Musharraf we would keep the Northern Alliance out of Kabul, but we couldn't stop them. Then they slaughtered at least 100 Pakistani fighters holed up in a school in the battle for Mazar-i-Sharif.

From the Pakistani point of view, it looks as though their enemies in the Alliance are taking over the whole country, and that the everybody-in government we promised them is a pipe dream.

On the magazine cover, the big headline next to Oprah's shoulder is as warm and cuddly as the pair of cocker spaniels in her lap. "WE ARE FAMILY," it says. "Now more than ever: the power and pleasure of feeling connected."

Inside this new issue of O -- "The Oprah Magazine" -- the editorial director's lead-off article offers a profound explanation. "Our vision of family has been expanded," writes Oprah Winfrey. "From the ashes of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and that field in Pennsylvania arose a new spirit of unity. We realize that we are all part of the family of America."

It's an appealing concept, especially during these uncertain times. Ever since Sept. 11, countless media outlets have provided similar themes. The December issue of O deftly hits the now-familiar high notes. Three-quarters of the way through the thick, glossy, ad-filled magazine, "We Are Family" reappears in large type, under an American flag and over another message from Oprah. "America is a vast and complicated family," she declares, "but -- as the smoke clears and the dust settles -- a family nonetheless."

AUSTIN -- WHOA! The problem is the premise. We are having one of those circular arguments about how many civil liberties we can trade away in order to make ourselves safe from terrorism, without even looking at the assumption -- can we can make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free? There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.

Exactly what do we want to strike out of the U.S. Constitution that we think would prevent terrorist attacks? Let's see, if civil liberties had been suspended before Sept. 11, would law enforcement have noticed Mohamed Atta? Would the FBI have opened an investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, as Minneapolis agents wanted to do? The CIA had several of the 9-11 actors on their lists of suspected terrorists. Exactly what civil liberty prevented them from doing anything about it?

For most people in the United States, the picture of events since Sept. 11 has been largely framed by television. When pollsters with Princeton Survey Research asked "Where have you gotten most of your news about the attacks?" more than a week later, a whopping 87 percent of adults gave TV as the answer.

While newscasts are still apt to be disturbing, television is mostly back to normal. Some commercials pay respect to patriotic themes, and Old Glory continues to get a lot of screen time. But an ultimate expression of media normalcy -- the relentless barrage of TV ads -- returned to full strength after a mid-September hiatus of several days. The one-two punch of mind-numbing commercials and checked-out entertainment has never packed more of a wallop than it does now.

Overall, the media disconnect is pretty extreme: Journalists and a range of commentators have told us that our world changed profoundly and irreversibly on Sept. 11. Yet the vast majority of what's on television is in the same old groove.

AUSTIN, Texas -- The fate of Flight 587 is not just a free-standing tragedy, but almost the last thing we needed. Even if the cause remains a mystery, the edginess quotient just shot back up again.

It has seemed to me the media have been engaging in a slightly unseemly amount of navel-gazing concerning our nerves, with perhaps excessive media temperature-taking of anxiety levels, crooning over stress on the home front, etc. Americans on the front lines of this war, including the NYFD, are handling their jobs without swooning, and from my own travels around the country, it seems to me most of the rest of us are managing to comport ourselves with reason and dignity, whatever our anxiety levels.

Unfortunately, the few nincompoops among us now have fresh occasion for hysteria: the always-timely advice THINK comes to mind. The absolute last thing we need is another round of Arab-bashing.

CHICAGO -- Good news, bad news; bad news, good news. Plane crash: bad news. "Just" a plane crash: good news. Our side takes Kabul. Ooops, our side could be a problem.

My favorite guy on our side is Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord who took Mazar-i-sharif.

According to The New York Times, at age 23, Dostum led a militia of Uzbeks who sided with the Soviets when they invaded in '79. He rose to command an armored division and helped the Soviets kill about a million Afghans and drive more into exile. He sided with the Soviet puppet regime after the Soviets left in '89, but switched sides in '92 and helped overthrow them, instead.

In 1996, he joined the Taliban, and since then he has switched sides again -- first fighting then joining the late leader of the Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud. Dostum ruled Mazar-i-sharif and six northern provinces, according to Pakistan intelligence. He seems to have favored corruption, nepotism and an un-Islamic lifestyle. In other words, this one is a doozy.

AUSTIN --- This being the season of thanksgiving, I am come to toast Bob Eckhardt, the great Texas congressman, who died last week at 88. We owe him thanks and are so lucky to have had him with us. What a rare one. And a lot of fun, too.

If ever a politician of the 20th century deserved the title "legislator," it was Eckhardt -- legal scholar, craftsman, steeped to his bones in the constitution, law and history. They called him, "The House's lawyer." The only politician I ever knew who could write a bill so that it did precisely what it was intended to do, and did nothing it was not intended to do, with a vision lasting past generations.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Say, here's an item: A group of right-wing journalists famed for their impartiality has set themselves up as the Patriotism Police. No less distinguished a crowd than Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, The New York Post editorial page and the Fox News Channel --- quite a bunch of Pulitzer winners there -- are now passing judgment on whether media outlets that do actual reporting are sufficiently one-sided for their taste.

With the insouciance toward fact for which he is so noted, Limbaugh erroneously reported that Peter Jennings had been highly critical of President Bush for disappearing on Sept. 11. The Dittoheads flooded ABC with complaints. The bone of contention since has been over the reporting of civilian casualties in Afghanistan.