Editor’s Page

We have no articles in this issue about the Lebanon war. Nobody in his or her right mind would venture to do a piece now (end of August) to be read in mid-October—when there might be a stable cease-fire or another war or a diplomatic initiative or, most likely, when we will still be waiting for the UN. When we finally do write about the war, there will be a lot to criticize: the familiar pattern of UN inaction that allowed the buildup of Hezbollah’s arsenal, the conduct of the war by both Hezbollah and Israel, the media coverage of the war around the world, and an outcome that could too easily produce a renewal of the fighting. But there is another issue that should be central for the Western left: the need for moral clarity about the politics of radical Islam, represented in this case by the president of Iran and the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah. What these people express is a zealous hatred for everything that the left stands for—or should stand for. Which makes those “We are all Hezbollah” banners carried in antiwar, actually anti-Israel, demonstrations in European cities very disturbing. We will have more to say about this in 2007.

This issue features Darryl Lorenzo Wellington’s fine report on the state of New Orleans a year after Katrina. We can rarely mobilize the resources to send a writer across the country. But the destruction of an American city and the extraordinary failure of the government to look after the refugees or to organize their re...