Ideological warfare?(on the right)(political drama)

NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 8

PRESIDENT BUSH has eight times (someone is counting) struck the theme that the war we are in is a decisive ideological struggle. Anyone who is killed today, in Afghanistan or Iraq, will certainly subscribe to the proposition that his death was a decisive act. But we are nevertheless left wondering whether it was an ideological act, of the kind the White House is speaking of.

Ideological divisions result from irreconcilable positions held by entities laying claim to command of the scene. Mr. Bush correctly enunciates ideals that can't be pursued in areas of the world dominated by an understanding of Islam that permits no deviation. But before declaring the impasse unbridgeable, one asks: Cannot a means of living together be contrived?

In the heat of the day arrived in Washington a leading clerical figure of Iran. Mohammad Khatami was president of Iran from 1997 to 2005 and is the highest-ranking Iranian to visit Washington since we severed relations after the 1979 revolution. And what does he tell us--at the National Cathedral, no less?

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Well, he says, a smile on his face, we must collaborate in search of a world in which there are no extra-conventional weapons. Why should there be, when the differences between us can be dealt with other than through force and violence?

You see, he explained, there is, actually, an overlap in teachings from the three world religions that descended from Abraham. "Jesus," Khatami said, "is the prophet of kindness and peace. Muhammad is the prophet of ethics, morality, and grace. Moses is the prophet of dialogue and exchange."