The Week

Gail Sheehy has turned her attention to the elderly in a new book called Sex and the Seasoned Woman. In related news, Bill Clinton just turned 60 . . .

One good thing about the London-based plot to blow up America-bound airliners (besides the great good fact of its being foiled) is the single-mindedness of al-Qaeda. The plan resembled 9/11, and even more closely the aborted Bojinka plot of 1995 to blow up airliners over the Pacific. God help us when al-Qaeda turns its attention to softer American targets—as it, or some terrorist wannabe, undoubtedly will. The sickness in Islam girdles the globe, from Iran to John Muhammad, from Saudi moneymen to London jihadis. The worst reaction to such a constellation of threats is the whack-a-mole hysteria of the punditry or (in some moods) Congress: “The administration says it’s fighting terror here, but what about over there?” Ladies and gentlemen: Our problems are here, there, and everywhere. They will last our lifetime. You have heard of the Thirty Years’War. This is ours-if not our Hundred Years’ War.

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Gail Sheehy has turned her attention to the elderly in a new book called Sex and the Seasoned Woman. In related news, Bill Clinton just turned 60 . . .

One good thing about the London-based plot to blow up America-bound airliners (besides the great good fact of its being foiled) is the single-mindedness of al-Qaeda. The plan resembled 9/11, and even more closely the aborted Bojinka plot of 1995 to blow up airliners over the Pacific. God help us when al-Qaeda turns its attention to softer American targets—as it, or some terrorist wannabe, undoubtedly will. The sickness in Islam girdles the globe, from Iran to John Muhammad, from Saudi moneymen to London jihadis. The worst reaction to such a constellation of threats is the whack-a-mole hysteria of the punditry or (in some moods) Congress: “The administration says it’s fighting terror here, but what about over there?” Ladies and gentlemen: Our problems are here, there, and everywhere. They will last our lifetime. You have heard of the Thirty Years’War. This is ours-if not our Hundred Years’ War.