Gambling In Casablanca

Republican evil mastermind Karl Rove recently took a lot of heat for observing that the GOP responded to 9/11 by preparing for war, while liberals wanted to pursue terrorists with criminal litigation and therapy. This ball was snatched up as a potential political alley-oop: Democrats grew hot-faced and indignant, and claimed Rove was attempting to divide the country along partisan lines.

Now, most of my readers won't bother to read them - but suffice to say that the conservative side of the blogoshere has already gone apeshit finding article after article by liberals about how terrorism should be pursued in the courts, and we need to understand our attackers and their motivations. (Juan Cole, white courtesy phone.)

And this morning on NPR, immediately after a segment about Rove's remarks in which you could hear the consternation in the hosts voice - they cut, without any interruption or apparent sense of irony - to a long segment about suicide bombers, the nuances of their personal biographies, their motivations for blowing people to bits, and how we should change US foreign policy to avoid them.