I couldn’t resist looking at the end of O’Neill’s book, out of sheer curiosity about how the 1990s turned out, from his perspective. I was not disappointed. “An important but immeasurable feature of Clinton’s success is the evil things that did not happen on his watch but that were planned during it. . . . Beneath the frivolity of the Clinton years dark forces had been gathering their strength, waiting for a chance to slouch toward Bethlehem” — wait for it! – “the opportunity that 9/11 would give them. Flying under the media’s radar in little-read publications, think tanks, and other shadowy venues, neoconservatives and their allies plotted . . .”

Three points. 1) I’m far from uncritical of the Bush administration’s policies in the War on Terror and 2) I confess a certain literary admiration for the little rhetorical change-up O’Neill achieves in this paragraph but 3) to transfer the name of “evil,” “dark forces” “slouch[ing] toward Bethlehem” from the Bin Ladenist murderers to the George W. Bush administration is deeply morally unsound, and is not worth the frisson it gives the reader (and, I’m sure, even more, the writer).