Jacob Heilbrunn

National Public Radio is making news again. A few months ago it created a stir when it fired Juan Williams as a commentator. Now it's embroiled in a new controversy.

James O'Keefe, known as a Republican procateur whose targets have included Acorn, managed to persuade NPR executives Ronald Schiller and Betsy Liley to attend a lunch with members of the fictitious Muslim Education Action Center Trust, which was dangling a $5 million donation. At the lunch Schiller laid into the GOP and the Tea Party, denouncing the racism allegedly pervading the latter movement. Much of what Schiller said sounds like liberal boilerplate.

The real reason to denounce Schiller isn't his clumsy statements about the GOP. They're about why a journalist would go to a lunch without even bothering to Google the organization or check into its bona fides. In other words, Schiller got suckered. What kind of standards does that represent?

There can be no doubting that NPR is filled with liberal journalists. But liberalism in its reports isn't really the problem, either. It's that the shows tend to be anodyne. The reporting that NPR does from abroad is its high-point. But otherwise the organization is listing.

What the Schiller brouhaha highlights isn't a problem with the reporters. It's with the management. Something has gone awry when executives feel like they can bloviate about their personal views to outsiders whom they don't even know. Schiller, who is apparently leaving the organization, was venting, presumably at least partly in the hopes of landing the juicy $5 million. Now it could stand to lose a lot more if the Congress does go after its federal funding. Is Vivian Schiller, NPR's head, capable of cleaning up the mess?

UPDATE: Latest reports are that Vivian Schiller has been terminated by NPR's board.

 Why has the GOP become addicted to war? The default response of the party to almost any international conflict has been to argue that America should intervene, or, to use a less polite term, intrude into what amounts, more often than not, to a domestic dispute. Add the political capital that congressional leaders and presidential aspirants believe can be derived from pummeling a Democratic president for passivity, appeasement, and you have a recipe for embroiling America in messy foreign conflicts.

Libya is a case in point. My TNI colleague Paul Pillar demolishes the arguments being made by Iraq last-ditchers that the venture was a blazing success as evidenced currently by the revolts sweeping across the Middle East. He notes that, contrary to Charles Krauthammer, Libya's Gadhafi was not quaking at the prospect of being driven from power, ala Saddam Hussein, but, rather, was interested in having sanctions lifted and that moves to negotiate with him date all the way back to 1999.

But I think one could go even further. The neocons who urged America to invade Iraq are now noisily denouncing President Obama for being a wussbag on Libya. At the same time, Sen. Mitch McConnell said that "arming the insurgents" should be considered. And so on.

But there are sound reasons to resist such a course. The last thing that America needs is to become bogged down in Libya. Yes, all power to the rebels for taking on Gadhafi. But frankly, it's their fight and they have to win it. Inserting America directly into the conflict would simply fan, not create, the perception that an outside imperialist power is once more throwing its not inconsiderable weight around in the Middle East. Maybe a no-fly zone could be established with NATO. But this is not the time for America to come swaggering in by itself. America's military may still be top gun, but this isn't a Top Gun moment.

White House chief of staff William Daley correctly noted "this has to be an international effort" on NBC's Meet the Press. Sen. John Kerrry suggested that Libya's runways could be bombed. But that's as far as it should go, if it even gets to that point.

The Wall Street Journal is denouncing "Obama's Libyan Abdication." It predicts,

 

The greatest danger now to U.S. interests—and to Mr. Obama's political standing—would be for Gadhafi to regain control. A Libya in part or whole under the Gadhafi clan would be a failed, isolated and dangerous place ruled by a vengeful tyrant and a likely abettor of terrorists.

 

It likens Obama's alleged passivity to the Bush administration's failure to protect the Shiites in Iraq whom it encouraged to rebel. But there is a distinction. The Obama administration did not encourage Libyans to overthrow the loathsome Gadhafi. Instead, Libyans are doing it themselves. Which is why Obama is right to be wary about inserting himself into a Libyan civil war that Gadhafi is likely to lose, whether or not American forces assists the rebel forces.

Terrorism in Germany is not new. During the Weimar Republic, terror was routinely practiced, as mainstream politicians were murdered or beaten. Then, in the 1960s, the Red Army Faction (RAF) arose. Several generations, aided by the East German secret police, or Stasi, devoted themselves to targeting what they saw as western imperialism. The RAF, among other things, detonated a car bomb at Rhein-Main Air Base in 1985. "We are not misty-eyed social workers," the terrorist organization announced.

Indeed.

As the shooting of four members of the American Air Force who had arrived in Frankfurt airport from England reminds us, terrorism continues to flourish in Germany. The new threat, of course, comes from Islamic radicals. Hamburg is where the 9/11 plot was hatched. In March 2010, four converted Islamic radicals who belonged to the group Islamic Jihad Union were convicted of seeking to attack American military facilities. Now a Kosovar Islamic radical, the twenty-one year-old Arid U. who worked for the German post office at the airport, has apparently murdered two Americans and injured another two. The question surrounding his action is whether he is an isolated killer or part of a wider plot.

The Kosovo problem, in other words, may be coming back to haunt America, in ways that it did not anticipate. The danger presented by Islamic radicals in Kosovo has always been apparent. Is there a wider problem emanating from radical Kosovo organizations that are intent on targeting the American military? Did the killer have lethal ties back home? Or is this shooting the work of a loner, who had publicized his intention to go "amok" on radical internet sites. Nevertheless, the attack was carefully planned, as the pilots were dressed in civilian clothes and the shooter was familiar with their time-tables.

As it is, terrorism in Germany has mutated into the work of Islamic radicals, whether homegrown or foreign. Now, as then, American soldiers remain the target of delusional killers who believe that they are battling imperialism by engaging in murder.

President Obama is taking a pounding from various quarters for supposedly being too slow to respond to Libya's plight. To read the Wall Street Journal editorial page, he should have sent in the Marines a long time ago. Col. Gaddafi must himself be feeling a little peeved. Is this the kind of loyalty he receives in exchange for handing over his nuclear and chemical weapons programs to the Bush administration?

Now the poor chap is staging his own personal Twlight of the Gods. The bizarre interview with Christiane Amanpour, the huffing and puffing about the love he experiences from the Libyan people--all suggest that he resembles the classic megalomaniac dictator. During World War II, Harvard historian William Langer, who was working for the OSS, accurately predicted that Hitler would commit suicide rather than allow himself to be captured. Hitler figured that he would be stuck in a cage by the Russian and exhibited like a captive bear.

It's hard to see Gadaffi allowing himself to be captured, either. All signs and portents are that he wants the grand finale, the big fireworks, as he exits the global stage. Perhaps he not so secretly enjoys the massive dose of attention he's receiving. Not everyone gets to exit with such fanfare. For decades he has managed to strut about, his oil wealth allowing him to engage in the most bizarre behavior, while the West looked on haplessly. He even got the man behind the Lockerbie bombing extricated because England wanted to tap into his oil.

So John Bolton's complaints about Obama engaging in "buckpassing" by handing over the prosecution of Gadaffi to the International Criminal Court don't really add up. According to Bolton,

a new Libyan government should be responsible for dealing with Gadhafi's atrocities. Every crime he is responsible for, from the terrorist bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, to his current street massacres, has been done in the name of the Libyan people. They are the ones who should judge Gadhafi, as Iraqis did with Saddam Hussein.

 

Of course, this assumes two things. The first is that Gadaffi will be taken alive, which is doubtful. Summary justice is more likely. The second is that there will be a viable Libyan government. In Iraq, after all, American boots on the ground propped up a shaky Iraqi regime. That's not  likely to be the case in Libya.

The real problem with sending Gadaffi to the ICC is that he could point to the hypocrisy of western regimes, which have only turned on him now that his country is in revolt. Any trial might disclose embarrassing revelations about the eagerness of Europe and America to treat with him. The butcher of Lockerbie, one of the most odious rulers of the past century, flaunted his power with impunity. A trial might reveal more about America and Europe than the Libyan despot.