CBS Philosophy

A friend sends the following excerpt from Katie Couric’s interview with President Bush:

COURIC: I know we’re almost out of time, Mr. President, and you have a very busy day ahead. But one philosophical question that many have that I’d like you to respond to, if you could, is that US policy, vis-à-vis Iraq, and the United States’ close alliance with Israel, certainly highlighted in recent events between Israel and Lebanon, has galvanized terrorists worldwide. In other words, these policies have created more terrorists than they have eliminated.

Actually, what’s galvanized terrorists worldwide is training and funding and backing for years by the likes of the totalitarian ayatollahs of Iran, the Saudi Wahhabis, the Syrian Baathists, Moammar Gadhafi, Yasser Arafat, and — yes — the former Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein (patron, in its day, of Palestinian suicide bombers; host to Al Qaeda delegations visiting from Afghanistan; and erstwhile warden of one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, Abdul Rahman Yasin).

Couric’s question — which she presents not as a question, but a statement — leaves me with a vision of how she might have interviewed President Roosevelt, if she’d been on the beat during World War II: “I know we’re almost out of time, Mr. President. But don’t you think the U.S. alliance with Britain is upsetting the Nazis?”