Jeff, what do you see ahead in Iraq, in the Middle East generally?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG (Washington Correspondent, THE NEW YORKER): I don't see very much good ahead in Iraq and even in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. You know how bad things are in the Middle East generally when people are looking for hope in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Iraq, we're obviously in the throws of a civil war that can become much worse than it is right now and probably will. There are commentators who are talking about the beginning of a thirty-year war between Shiites and Sunnis, and when you have a thirty-year war that spreads obviously out of Iraq, that touches Lebanon, that touches Syria, that touches Iran, you're talking about, among other things, huge instability in oil prices. You're talking about the necessity for American involvement, even though the American people seem to be quite tired right now of being engaged in the Middle East.
ABERNETHY: And is there anything, E.J., is there anything politically here that the United States can do to make Jeff's prediction a little less dire?
E.J. DIONNE (Columnist, THE WASHINGTON POST; Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution; and Professor, Georgetown University): Well, there is this proposal around that the president seems interested in to have this surge of 30-50,000 American troops. The claim is that they can sort of get the violence in Baghdad, the Shia-Sunni violence, under control. A lot of people, myself included, are skeptical of that. But more importantly, more important than my skepticism is the skepticism of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who aren't sure that that can work, so that I think it's very hard to see anything optimistic there. The line that keeps coming to me is the congressperson who says, "There are three things we need to do to fix Iraq, and unfortunately nobody knows what they are."ABERNETHY: Jeff, but you mentioned Israel and Palestine.
Mr. GOLDBERG: Right.
ABERNETHY: That was one of the recommendations of the Iraq Study GroupÖ
Mr. GOLDBERG: Right.
ABERNETHY: Öthat the U.S. get much more involved thereÖ
Mr. GOLDBERG: Right.
ABERNETHY: Ötrying to bring about something. Is that possible?
Mr. GOLDBERG: Well, that's one of the parts of the Iraq Study Group recommendations that I simply don't understand. I'm not sure how the restarting of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations will convince Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq to stop killing each other. There's a huge leap of logic there, and I'm surprised that in a document that's being sold to us as a document based on realism, not on neoconservative ideology, that they make this very hopeful link. I think that it's worth starting the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue again for its own sake, and it's true that if you lower tensions in the Middle East conflict, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that has a generally good effect throughout the Arab world. But the other assumption built in is that these negotiations that they are proposing are going to go well, and I don't know where that hopefulness comes from, because if you start this again -- and of course it's going to be very hard to start, because the Palestinians are right now engaged in a little bit of a civil war themselves -- who's to say that these talks wouldn't fall apart in rancor, in hatred?
ABERNETHY: E.J., the message in the election was clearly that people didn't like what was going on in Iraq. But now the Democrats are going to run the Congress. What do you expect?
Mr. DIONNE: Well, I think on Iraq here you will see more and more pressure to withdraw troops, but they clearly don't want to push this to the limits yet. Most Democrats still don't want to cut off funding for the war, partly because they don't want to be in a position of being accused of cutting off funding for our soldiers. But clearly there'll be more pressure to get out, and I think that's why so many Democrats, whatever they thought of the Iraq Study Group in detail, kind of embraced it because it seemed to point out. I think on domestic issues you're going to see a revived interest, in the broad sense, in inequality and in the problems of those left out in the economic growth in recent years. They're going to raise the minimum wage. They're going to try to do something to expand health care coverage. But I think this session really is kind of preparatory for the future. With Bush in the White House and such narrow margins, especially in the Senate, they know there's a limit in what they can do. So I also think they're going to be starting a big argument about what should government do to deal with pension problems, health care problems -- some very practical things that are hitting people in the middle class and at the bottom of the economy very hard.
ABERNETHY: And a lot of investigations?
Mr. DIONNE: Yeah, I think there will be a lot of investigations. I mean, you know, Republicans will say this is persecution; Democrats will say it is accountability. I don't think it will get out of hand. I mean, I think they're not going to investigate Cheney stealing a paper clip. I mean, I think they know that there's enough material there that they can look very responsible and still have an awful lot to investigate.
ABERNETHY: Rachel, you've been looking at what's been going on in the evangelical Christian community, some kind of loosening of attitudes that once were pretty hard, especially on things like global warming. Talk about that a little bit. Where's that going?
RACHEL ZOLL: (Religion Writer, Associated Press): Next year you'll see a lot more open disagreements about almost who it's okay to talk to and who it's okay to work with. Not that there's necessarily a spiritual litmus test, but for some hardliners on the right -- they don't like to see any movement by their evangelical leaders towards meeting with people who don't necessarily agree with them on issues like abortion. And we saw this this past year when Barack Obama was invited to Saddleback Church, Rick Warren's church, to speak. There were some people who didn't like the fact that he was invited to speak on that pulpit especially. Rick Warren went to Syria, and there were some people who thought that was wrong. How could a preacher go to Syria?
ABERNETHY: And he is planning a trip, isn't he, to North Korea?
Ms. ZOLL: He will be. He's planning to go to North Korea next year as well, and there are some people who don't like that. Now he thinks that it's his job, and he said it repeatedly, to speak about God wherever he's given the opportunity. But for some people it looks like he's approving of what these countries are doing.
ABERNETHY: And while I've got you, let me move you on to the split in the Episcopal Church.
Ms. ZOLL: Sure.
ABERNETHY: Where is that going?
Ms. ZOLL: That is anyone's guess. It's a very complicated situation. I don't see it easing up any at all in this next year. Basically, the most important meeting that's going to come up is in February in Tanzania, where the leaders of the Anglican Communion are going to come together and try to find a way, if they possibly can, to stay together even though they have very different ways of looking at the Bible. One of the things that's going to be very interesting about that is it's going to be the first world Anglican meeting where the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, who is the first woman Anglican provincial leader in the entire history of the Anglican Communion, will actually be representing this Church. And there are a lot of people overseas who don't like her beliefs, who think that she's too liberal and do not like her support for gay relationships.
Mr. DIONNE: I think Rachel puts her finger on something very important when she talks about this ferment inside the white evangelical community, and I think Obama visiting Rick Warren's church was symptomatic of that.
is on board with this idea of going around talking about abortion as a tragedy that should be avoided. And there are some people, I think, who are a little bit nervous about the fact that there are anti-abortion Democrats who are gaining leadership.
ABERNETHY: Jeff, back to the Middle East.
ABERNETHY: Yeah, but I mean military failure can lead some people to say perhaps, well, it doesn't work. Force doesn't work. And maybe all these horrors that you think might be out there lead to a new argument for nuclear nonproliferation?
Mr. GOLDBERG: Right, right. I mean, these are not liberals in the Berkeley-Cambridge sense of liberal, but they're certainly a group of people in Iran who -- and this is, you can't underestimate this -- who are embarrassed by Ahmadinejad, embarrassed by the Holocaust denial that comes out of Tehran now, and that sort of thing. And, you know, this is the race. We're in a race, and we can't affect this race. The race is between the Iranian people and the Iranian leadership. If the Iranian people will overthrow their government before the Iranian mullahs get the bomb, that's what we're hoping for. But we can't get them to do that. They have to do it on their own. And after 30 years of this Islamic leadership, the people are tired of it, and it's just a matter of time before the mullahs are overthrown. But I don't know how much time that is.
Mr. GOLDBERG: God bless them for it.
