Sept. 21, 2001 - My office is connected via both wired and wireless media so that I can, when I want, monitor what is going on in the world. Since the terrorist attack on New York on September 11 most of us have been a little jumpy. Especially those of us in and around the New York City area. So now I periodically during the day turn on the news to see if anything else has happened.

There is no TV in my office but I can get all of the TV stations' sound on my stereo. When I turn it on to check the news I am listening for strained voices, breathless reports, or anything else that will tell me something serious is going on. If everything sounds normal I turn it off and go back to work.

Yesterday afternoon I was doing one of my news checks when I heard a stentorian voice saying interesting things about terrorists. Whoa, I thought, who's this and what's wrong with him? What he was saying was much too substantive to be the communal newspeak of an American TV journalist. The vanilla faced announcers on our media are immediately recognizable with their stale, formulaic techniques of delivery and the way they do their best to avoid anything really meaningful. Same goes for the so-called experts the media appoint to say safe and predictable things.

(The attempt by the media to avoid all things meaningful and important is understandable. Were it otherwise, the contrast with the stupefyingly stupid content of the typical commercial would be too obvious to bear. This is why the major networks suspended all advertising for a week after the World Trade Center attack.)

I wanted to hear more of what this voice was saying and I wanted to know who it belonged to. After I had moved to the television and turned it on I saw that the speaker was former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responding to questions from Congressman Tom Lantos (D-Cal.). The setting was clearly one of those hearing rooms in the Capital where congressional committees meet.

Netanyahu was talking about terrorism and what they had learned in Israel about dealing with it. His bearing, appearance and demeanor were clearly those of a leader. He was courteous without being obsequious, articulate and knowledgeable without being prissy, self-assured without appearing arrogant. And most impressive of all to me, he sounded . . . smart!

Why, I thought, don't we have anyone like this in American leadership roles? Where's our Netanyahu? The contrast between Netanyahu and Bush is painful. Bush comes out of the comparison thin as gruel, two-dimensional, inarticulate. Once he runs out of the trite one-liners his keepers come up with for him his remarks devolve into meaningless clichés and vacuous generalities.

Similar in style but even worse is Attorney General John Ashcroft. He can't put two consecutive sentences together without clichés, which he doesn't even use correctly. He is clearly a very stupid man, which realization provides answers to why he is a good friend of Bush's and why Bush made him Attorney General after Ashcroft had lost his bid for reelection to the U.S. Senate (he lost to a dead man). The answer is that Ashcroft makes Bush feel smart, which must be no mean feat.

Just about the time Netanyahu's comments were getting really good and I felt like I was finally learning something true and useful about Islamic terrorists, the network (CNN, I think) pulled away. They cut away from the meaningful information coming from Netanyahu to bring us the insipid remarks of Britain's Tony Blair. He was speaking from the pulpit of a church where a religious ceremony was being conducted in remembrance of Britain's fallen dead in the WTC attack. Blair is very much like Bush in a lot of ways, except Blair was actually elected to his position. I resented the broadcast switch because I wanted to hear more of what Netanyahu had to say. Britain is our most important ally, next to Canada, but I wasn't interested at that time in any memorial comments by Blair.

I did a little checking on Netanyahu and found that he spent his high school years in the US (which may explain why he speaks flawless English without an accent), he has a couple of degrees from MIT and studied political science at Harvard. He is a decorated Israeli war hero, heads an Israeli anti-terrorism commission, and has written a couple of books on terrorism and how to deal with it. Boy, could we use him right now.

But what we get instead is a new national security office larded with all the new bureaucracy that will entail. Bush has decided to kick Colin Powell in the teeth by forming a new Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security. It really belongs under the Secretary of State - whatsa matter, Shrub, Powell gettin too uppity fer ya? Bush has selected Tom Ridge to be the new homeland czar. He is Governor of Pennsylvania and another Bush pal. Ridge is a decorated Viet Nam veteran, but Colin Powell is a decorated GENERAL, godammit! I don't get it. Or maybe I do and don't want to accept it.

So here's my proposition. It is a sort of lend-lease deal. Since you are not using Netanyahu in Israel right now, maybe you could let us borrow him. Just for a while. He could have the job of heading the Homeland Security office. He would make a better homeland czar than Ridge by several orders of magnitude. Think of it as a return for all those billions in foreign aid we have willingly given Israel, and for all those Americans who became Israeli citizens, including a former Israeli Prime Minister.

To sweeten the deal we'll let you have Bush for a while to do the one thing he does really well. Schmooze. You can use him to chum-up with Arafat and try to humanize him (humanize Arafat, that is). Bush is a lot better person than Arafat, of course, but the two of them do have one thing in common. Bush was governor of the most murderous state in America. Under his governorship Texas executed more prisoners, even retarded ones, than any other state in the union. Arafat's PLO has a similar kind of record with airline hijackings. Plus Bush is really a very likeable guy (when he's not trying to act like President), so he and Arafat might get along just swell.

So what do you say? Is it a deal? Please let us know as soon as possible because at the rate at which Bush is (not) dealing with terrorism (but apparently making ready to blow up some rocks and teach those starving bastards in Afghanistan), and seems to be bending over backwards to kiss Islam's collective butt, we do not have unlimited time to wait.

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