MUST SEE TV:

BOOKNOTES: Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime by Eliot Cohen (C-SPAN, Sunday night, 8pm & 11pm)

LAMB: How do you personally feel about the situation?

COHEN: If I can again, the book is not about Iraq.

LAMB: But if you are going to any war, this book would be...

COHEN: It be, yes - absolutely.

LAMB: And our president is reading this book.

COHEN: Absolutely. No, I understand all that. It's just I've had, you know, I've gotten - one thing's been interesting about the book is, particularly, since the word came out the president's being reading it - the foreign president, in particular, has been all over it. And unlike American journalists who usually at least take some kind of look at the dust jacket and maybe even flip through a few changes, a lot of the international coverages, I don't think people even bothered to do that. And so they're -- and people saying things about the book, which aren't just true.

LAMB: Like what?

COHEN: That it's - well, there's one story that this is the case for invading Iraq. Pretty ludicrous. But it's - when a book, I guess, attracts publicity in this context, people feel afraid to say all kinds of things.

Absolutely if you missed this you should watch online or check out the transcript; it was a fascinating hour of television. There are any number of moments we could discuss, but let's start with this one, which reveals something about America vs. Europe that is seldom discussed intelligently. Europeans believe and we to a shocking degree accept as true, that they understand the world better than we bumpkins in the U.S. But is there any people on Earth who are more curious about the world around them than we are?
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 23, 2002 1:21 PM